An Historical Introduction To Modren Philosphy

AN HISTORICAL
INTRODUCTION
TO MODERN
PHILOSOPHY

)y Hugh MILLER

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Ot LoS AflgcleS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
/j>47 New York

PREFACE

T

i.HIS BOOK IS INTENDED TO LEAD THE READER TO AN
understanding of contemporary philosophy, allowing
lim to pl£|^ his fti^.paurts in the intellectual life of tliK time.

Recent 'i^’^afices in science and logic have effected a radical
eorientation erf thc^ht, necessitating profound readjustments
] 1 our concepTOiw v the individual, society, and nature. So
. eep do these changes go that they seem to cut through the
. ving tissue which binds the present to the past. We face ut>'
recedented tasks, to the solution of which the past brings little
r no help; yet the tasks are so urgent that only immediate
ction, unhindered by time-consuming thought, seems to be of
vail. To this pressure of urgent and unprecedented tasks comes
he modem habit of mind, which assumes that problems arising
rat of present conditions must and can be solved by a better
terceprion of present activities. How should history help meet
[^e emergency which history has precipitated?
a; The publication of an historical introduction to philosophy
i{jherefore calls for some defense. The full defense of this his-
orical approach must be left to the chapters which follow.
These chapters indicate the nature of the problem which has
timulated the development of the western intellect, a problem
/hich has become steadily more insistent, until today its solu-
bn is in literal fact a matter of Ufe and death. The problem

Vt

^ strength of those very advances in science and logic which
titially threw us into intellectual confusion, it is possible to
neiem the moral foundation on which must be erected the
ilojjpionwealth of man.

T; is the task of philosophy to discern and to promulgate this
Weal truth, making itself the center and container of all educa-
'caL For of what profit is science, or art, or any industrial or
Sessional technique, if there be none alive to put it to use?
ys^e bibliographies appended to all but the later chapters are
•uifcnt to be suggestive rather than exhaustive, directing the su*'
■icfe to reading-matter which should be available in coll^

! (i public libraries. The concurrent reading of one or
niirt histories of philosophy will amplify what is preseyi^
f i'book, and provide a basis for its critical estimate. E^v
lisommended are the selections from the philosophy, ^
idves. It is by coming to grips with these men wh^
css shaped the human intellect that the student y
lod develop his own intellectual power. These yj
gt viewed critically, with understanding of the Q/i
htrioned them. For it is still and always true th?f

“Who reads . i

Incessantly, and to his reading htmg y
A spirit and judgment equal or supejZ
Unsettled and uncertain still remaiv
Deep versed in books but shallov ’

e
r

l;

h

' .^ay the ready spirit of Milton, w/'
I tanslate itself into action, be wi#

' his age, and who read this bool^

\

‘‘Oj Angeles

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE PIACE OF PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE 3

I THE GREAT BEGINNINGS

THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE
THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE*^

REFLECTION DEEPENS

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN
PLATO: THE MASTER MIND
THE SCIENCE OF ARISTOTLE
HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

n THE ANTECEDENTS OF MOr
PHILOSOPHY

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH
THE LONG MIDDLE AGE
THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOQETY
THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE*^

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 0!f
THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY/’

{continued) /

THE EMPIRICAL 'PHILOSOPHr^

THE EMPIRICAl!; PHILOSOPff

{continued) f.

THE REVIVAL OF POLIT^''

KANT: CAN RATIONAE^

RECONCILED? /

DIALECTICAL TSEJOlf
/DIALECTICAL MATf

AN HISTOR . lL INTRODUCTION
TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY

1 THE PLACE OF PHILOSOPHY
IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE

T

JL HE RECENT WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH MAKE CLEAR
to US the radical transition which has just occurred.
Western Europe, the source of western civilization, is no longer
its center. Western civilization has now two centers, one lo-
cated in North America and the other in Russia. These two
peoples head the van of human progress because they most
explicitly base their social constitutions upon political theory.
A political theory expounds some concept of justice. It there-
fore involves initially an ethical or social philosophy, and
finally a complete philosophy of nature and man.

It is apparent to most of us that we are entering a new
political epoch, an era in which government becomes to an un-
precedented degree the agency by which man seeks to control
his destiny, and especially to regulate conduct which directly
aifects other human individuals. Government tends today to
replace the religious, educational, charitable, and other institu-
tions which earlier helped to ameliorate human relations. It is
evident that this empowerment of government will proceed
further, and that the United States and Soviet Russia loom so
large in world affairs nbl only because of their size, but because

3

the place of philosophy in contemporary life 5

achieved by establishing the right economic system. The con-
troversy seems to turn on the question whether political his-
tory determines economic history, or vice versa; and it is not
perceived that the real issue is whether or not the individual
shall possess political-economic power of any sort whatsoever.
Very evidently, political history ib economically conditioned;
but it is equally evident that at the same time the course of
economic development is politically regulated. By focusing our
attention upon the pseudo-problem of which sphere exclu-
sively conditions the other, the absolutist deflects attention
from the real problem, which is whether the individual should
determine the political economy, i.e. the state, or be wholly
determined by it. The question of liberty goes by default.

Behind absolutistic doctrine, and supporting it, stands uni-
versalistic or rationalistic philosophy, the most authoritative
intellectual tradition of the past. Rationalism may be roughly
defined as the view that all particular or individual character
necessarily conforms to some definable system of natural law.
Communism is pcriiaps the most thoroughgoing application to
social and political life of this philosophy of natural law or
universal necessity. Once we accept the premise of natural
necessity, we are directly led to the conclusion that the human
individual ncce.ssarily conforms to some pattern of social neces-
sity, and that our aim should be the full realization of this
pattern in the state or political economy. The state becomes
identified with “universal being,” over which the individual
has no control.

■ What is the defense of the democrat against this rationalistic
doctrine, which leaves to the human individual neither in-
violable rights, nor political competence, nor in the last resort
any intelligible status? The democrat must aflirm the absolute-
ness of the individual, the ultimacy and the effectiveness of
individual character. What socially transpires, he must say, is
the end-result of a sum of individual actions, and not of any
universal necessity; and he must affirm this to be true also of

THE PLACE OF PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE 7

rights, no inherent value. Conduct becomes moral only as it
conforms to civic law. This doctrine provides no rationale for
democracy, which conceives the individual to be the creator
of law and the master of the state. The doctrine of Hobbes has
supported every sort of political absolutism, and has finally
issued in the totalitarian state against which our wars were
fought. It is the creed of political ‘absolutism.

But today, even amongst ourselves, this absolutistic doctrine
propagates itself in a new and powerful form. Is not govern-
ment an agency of the people, is not law the instrument by
which society imposes its will upon all.^ If so, should we not
look behind government to those popular or social movements
which arise by natural necessity, and which proceed by this
same necessity to surmount or overturn every obstacle to their
progress? Must not the individual either conform to this social
necessity or be destroyed by it? And are not they who perceive
this inevitable trend of social change, and who identify their
effort with its direction, at once authorized and compelled to
assume the powers of government and to become the agents
of natural necessity? Is not their ability to seize and maintain
government the proof of their right and duty to do so? This
is the conception of natural necessity which today under-
mines our faith in individual rights, and prepares the way for
tyranny.

How escape this conception? We should see that the concept
of natural necessity is simply incompatible with democratic
faith. According to this concept the individual person or thing
only seems to act freely — ^in truth, every individual reaction is
determined by some universal necessity. The individual reacts
in his own character, but his individual character is only the
local and transient manifestation of a universal form or natural
law. Individual character only seems to be individual, in reality
it is generic or universal. Here, in this depreciation of individual
character as unreal or unimportant, and in this elevation of
generic character as real and important, lies the premise of

THE PLACE OF PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE 9

Must we, therefore, simply announce our preference for
democratic government, saying that we just happen to like it
better than totalitarian government; and should we affirm the
postulate of individual freedom merely because it is logically
compatible with democratic government, whereas the postulate
of natural necessity is not? Is reason just a rationalization which
malces explicit the implications of an irrational choice? No,
we can elaborate the moral consequences or the ethical theories
flowing from the two postulates. We may see that the very
conception of value or goodness implies the power of the indi-
vidual to make decisions and to acknowledge their effect upon
his own and other lives. We may find that society is healthful
only if the energies and intelligence of its individual members
are morally and politically exercised. We may conclude that
the democratic participation of each and every individual in
government is the sole means of keeping government sensitive
to the social pressures exerted upon it, so that all nondemocratic
government is inherently unstable. These and other theoretical
considerations may influence our choice of the postulate of
freedom.

But what if the postulate, however preferable on moral
grounds, should be simply untrue? Is not human society part
and parcel of the larger world? Did not man emerge as the
inevitable result of an evolution of planetary life? Did not
organic nature merely complicate certain physical processes
which antedated the appearance of life? And is not physical
nature wholly necessitated, wholly uniform in its obedience to
physical laws? Can we suppose that freedom emerged with
man, or perhaps with the amoeba? Must we not conclude that
the appearance of freedom is an illusion, hiding frpm us the
fact of physical necessity?

It may jseem farfetched to make our faith in a certain form
of government depend upon a general philosophy which in-
quires into the character of everything that exists. Surely we
are more cognizant of the nature and needs of man than we

the place of philosophy in contemporary life II

stringency in the requirement that particular fact ^l^.,^ey
itself exactly and without residue to theoretical analysis. "Mfflgs
must be completely subject to natural necessity, Jit seemed,
since otherwise we could not discover this necessity worldng
in particular occurrence, nor define it in theoretical formulas.
The real character of things must be their uniformity or like-
ness, and the apparent differences which individuate things
must be illusory or meaningless. The human individual, a part
of nature, cannot escape this necessity. Men, too, under their
apparent individuality, must really be uniform and without
essential difference. We are justified, therefore, in seeking the
formulas which specifically define human character, and in
imposing these formulas upon aU individuals; for just insofar
as an individual departs from the formulas, he cannot be said
to be really human. He becomes unnatural or monstrous — ^if
he can be said to exist at all.

In this way, by means, of the concept of natural necessity,
modem science has been employed to support political and
other absolutism, and to discredit liberal theory and practice.
Science has increasingly become the real faith of modem man,
steadily displacing all other faiths; and if our faith in science
commits us to the tenets of political absolutism, there is little
point in continuing our lip service to liberty. This is why all
moral, philosophical, and political controver^ finally centers
on a single issue: Upon which concept is science established,
that of necessity or that of freedom?

The thought of the past, we said, inclined to the conclusion
that science involves the postulation of natural necessity. The
modem intellect derives from ancient Greece, and the great
thinkers of Greece who inaugurated this philosophical inquiry
into the implications of natural science were able to do small
justice to individuality and freedom. In its main current, which
flows through Plato and Aristotle, philosophy attributed to
existing things only a small measure of freedom. Things might
depart from universal form, it was held, only at the price of

■n OF PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE 12

TE PLACI J

>f morality and justice, by turning to criticism of the
ratio j^jjQgCic philosophy which affirms the postulate of neces-
sity. criticism without positive construction soon degen-
erated j^:o skepticism. It is not an accident that Hume, who
first cl^i.rly saw the real issue and boldly questioned the dogma
of natural necessity, is still known as a skeptic. It is not an
accident that liberal and empirical philosophy has become in-
creasingly confused, until today the very name of liberalism is
in bad repute amdng intellectuals. Has the great tradition of
liberty, which in the revolutions of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries moved to the establishment of free institutions,
lost substance, aim, and momentum? Is liberalism really dis-
credited? Must we conclude that democracy is only the transi-
tion from monarchical tyranny to some other form of despot-
ism?

It almost began to seem so. But, fortunately for ourselves
and for civilization, there have occurred withm this century
certain revolutionary advances in the fields of logic and science,
which turn the tables upon the authoritarian advocates of
natural necessity, and which reestablish, we must believe con-
clusively, the philosophical principle upon which is grounded
all liberty of thought and practice: These recent advances show
the belief in mathematical and physical necessity to be ground-
less; and without the support of this basic necessity, the notions
of chemical, biological, social, and other forms of necessity
have little plausibility. We know today that not men alone, but
all things, are free, even as Hume surmised. What looks like
physical or other necessity is something else, the true identity
of which awaits discovery. The postulate of natural necessity,
we now perceive, was only a cover for ignorance of the causes
of natural uniformity, and an excuse for not inquiring into
these causes. Things are necessarily uniform, we said, and that
is aU there is to it. We can no longer say this. Every uniformity
or conformity of individuals consrimtes a specific scientific

THE PLACE OF PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE 1 5

is. After three thousand years of philosophical effort we arrive
at philosophical truth; and we find it to be the truth which
was already realized in the long evolution to a liberal culture
and a democratic society. Practice anticipated theory.

It is to this philosophical truth, generative of a liberal and
just civilization, that the student of philosophy is brought
today. To convince oneself of its veracity, and to begin to
grasp its intellectual and practical consequence, one must know
something of the social and philosophical evolution leading
up to its establishment. So studied, in the light of its issue in
present truth, the history of western thought becomes much
more than a chronology of thinkers, systems, and ideas. It
resembles the dramatic history of some special science, each
epochal stage of which is illuminated and made significant by
the further advance to which it leads. The past is not Just the
past. In this world where time can have no stop, the past is
the movement which issues in the present; and only in the
light of its present issue can the past be known.

So we turn to an outline of the movement of western
thought, disclosing the evolution of the human intellect. The
-issue of this progress is truth; but the passion which motiv-
ated the long progress was the passion for justice. That pas-
sion, which created all the worlds, now creates the world to
come.

Notes for Fierther Reading

This book presents philosophy as a smdy seeking to establish a
broad intellectual foundation for political faith. There are other
approaches to philosophy, for example from science, art, mathe-
matics, religion.

The prefaces or initial chapters of various histories of philos-
ophy, and also the contents of various introductions to philosophy,
may be used to study such varieties of approach. Several of these
books will be found in any good college or city library, and the list
below is intended to be suggestive only. Russell’s recently published

I THE GREAT BEGINNINGS

2 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

T i 3:1^

HE GREEKS OF ANTIQUITT ABE OUR. INTELLECTUAL

pr ogenitors ; yet almost everything we look back to in
Greek antiquity was the work of two short centuries, lying
between 550 b.c. and 350 b.c., when Greek sculpture, architec-
ture, drama, science, and philosophy reached their zenith .
From that great and decisive begimiing proceeded the con-
tinuous, remarkably self-conscious development which issues
in the social and intellectual culture of today. Time and again,
when men have lost their bearings, they have returned to that
limpid stream of Greek life for guidance and assurance; and
seldom have they come away unrefreshed. We may even do
this still. Ancient Greece lives in us yet, in more ways than
we know. StiU the Greek thinker stands, a guide-post pointing
the way we have come and the way we must go.

We have been taught, not least by the Greeks themselves,
to think of the Greek truth as something timeless, suddenly
appearing to hang forever like a great star in the firmament
of the past. “There,” we say, ‘Svas Greece! ” as if we too be-
lieved that Athena had sprung in all her cool maturity from
the head of Zeus. But Greece also, of course, had its origins, its
infancy and adolescence. Of this long growth we know littie.
Suddenly the Greek genius found voice; and even as it sang, in

19

THE SIEUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

21

merchants of the inland sea. They kept alive their curious
wonder at the strange customs of other peoples, a wonder
which was to make them the observant analytical people they
became and the creators of natural science. Above all they
cherished their conception of what is right and proper in
human government. They were fiercely individualistic, in the
right sense of this word signifying a respect for individual
being everywhere, a sentiment which is the contrary of mere
egoism. This sense of the value of the human individual they
translated into the political conviction that government should
be by law. They believed that individuals may subject them-
selves with dignity to a common law, but only with indignity
to the fiat or whim of a personal ruler.

Settled on sea-girt island and promontories, or in mountain-
girt valleys and narrow littorals, the Greeks never became a
nation. Their creation of governmental mechanisms was never
so far developed as to show individual liberty to be compatible
with large community. Only in the small sovereign city-state,
they agreed, could a citizen actively participate in his govern-
ment. So the fierce love of liberty became identified with a
fierce loyalty to the city, precluding all larger. political unity;
and upon this rock of isolationism the Greek people fotmdered.

When the historical record begins, Greek society was
already suffering from the consequences of this limitation.
Gties economically favored by location had grown great;
they had become wealthy in trade; and they had attracted in-
creasing numbers of resident aliens who remained unfranchised,
so that citizenship became an hereditary privilege and a segre-
gative power. There appeared in such cities two factions whose
political opposition reflected a radical divergence of economic
interests. The landholders and farmers, citizens impoverished
by a commerce which enriched all but them, were conservative
or reactionary, resistant to change, doggedly jealous of their
ancient rights and privileges, and convinced that they alone
truly represented civic tradition and just law. They upheld the

THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

^3

cultural unity. The cities now formed a loose confederation,
at first under the direction of Sparta, whose militant way of
life seemed to qualify it for this leadership; but it was the
flexible genius of the Athenians, with their stout and clever
sailors, which at Salamis in 480 b.c. secured definitive victory
over great Persia. Athens was now commissioned by the con-
federation to keep intact the naval power, since Persia still
threatened. After a brief struggle against jealous Sparta, Athens
assumed what was virtually a hegemony over the Greek cities,
placing their contributions in its own treasury and seeking to
bring cases of dispute to its civic courts. Sparta, militant and
reactionary, was able to foment rebellion against progressive
Athens on the ground, apparently justified, that Athens abused
its commission and was aiming to subject all of Greece to its
imperial self.

The brilliant, unforgettable half century following the Per-
sian War produced the architectural masterpieces, the deathless
tragedies, the incomparable sculptures that still symbolize classi-
cal Greece. Then, in the long, increasingly brutal, and ruinous
Pelopoimesian War, which according to realistic Thucydides
changed the very soul of Greece, that lyrical, gracious, ener-
getic, and free spirit was darkened and all but destroyed. The
cities which Persia could not conquer destroyed one another;
and the Macedonian who waited in the north came down to
subjugate them all, and turn the world barbarian again.

One must not draw too close a parallel between the rise and
fall of the Greek cities and the present ruin of Europe after a
century rich in achievement. Yet it would be a worse error to
recognize the forces which first stimulated and then destroyed
Greece, and not to see these same forces working similar
destruction in the modem world. The basic failure of Greece
was its inability to advance to a just and stable political union,
giving to all of the Greek cities a due share of political power
and economic benefit. This failure in its turn was due in part
to the imperialistic presumptions of Athens, and in part to the

THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

25

gram in definitely moral and religions terms, and to distinguish
their pursuit of liberty from license and laissez-faire. Their
opponents, on the other hand, could point to an explicit ideal,
redized in civic history and civic practice, and calling only for
an obstinate fidelity.

Thus the fall of Greece is a major demonstration of the im-
portance of political,, moral, and religious forces in social evolu-
tion. If Greek history had been merely an economic develop-
ment, the Greek people would have been irresistibly drawn to
political unity. It seems evident that the majority of Greek
citizens were so impelled, their economic interests driving them
that way. But the small groups whose economic interests were
endangered by this movement were able to call into play very
definite political and moral forces which worked against the
economic trend. They were able to persuade the Greek people
to sacrifice economic interest to patriotic pride, moral integrity,
and religious piety. And they succeeded, in spite of the narrow-
ness of their social ideal, in holding back the tide of progress.

How could the progressives have undermined and overcome
the resolute, uncompromising fundamentalism of their con-
servative *opponents? Only by advancing to a larger political,
moral, and religious vision, retaining what was strong, clean,
honest, and true in the old faiths. The Athenians, for example,
believed that their austere and beloved PaUas Athene was the
daughter of Zeus, sprung from the very head and intelligence
of that father of the gods. How could the Greek people be
brought to worship Zeus himself, their common god, without
these local intermediaries? How could they advance to a justice,
a law, a morality and religion that was one and the same for all
Greeks? This was the question to which the ancient Greek
philosophers applied themselves; and out of their thought pro-
ceeded Greek science and ethics.

These men were not able to save Greece; but they began the
movement which may save posterity. Their work falls into
two distinct phases. The earlier thinkers had in mind primarily

THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

*7

implied, as does some contemporary humanism, a repudiation,
implicit or explicit, of the religious foundations of being. All
Greek literature, all truly Greek science, is repeated warning
against the thought that human life can be humanly lived in
neglect of its religious sources, and that respect for man ex-
cludes religious faith. Most intellectual of all the ancient peo-
ples, the Greeks were also the most deeply religious. We can
best understand this Greek outlook, at once humanistic and
religious, by a study of the work of Aeschylus, greatest poet of
the Greeks, in whose bold thought lies an insight common to
all the great prophets of the past.

Aeschylus, who fought at Marathon against the Persians in
490 B.C., returned to Athens to create the Greek theater and
to establish his own fame as one of the supreme dramatic poets
of all time. Of his many dramas, most are lost; but we possess
the gr^at trilogy portraying the death of Agamemnon and its
fateful consequence. The story really begins earlier, when
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the fabulous ex-
pedition against Troy, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to win
a favorable wind for his fleet. His wife Clytemnestra does not
forgive this ambitious violation of domestic love. She takes
a lover, sets him on the throne beside her, orders the destruc-
tion of Agamemnon’s son Orestes, and demeans his daughter
Electra. When Agamemnon returns victorious after the ten-
year siege of Troy, his wife murders him in the ceremonial bath.
Orestes, saved from death, grows up in exile under the admon-
ishments of the god Apollo to avenge his father. Come to man-
hood, he returns secretly to Mycenae, and meets Electra at
their father’s tomb. In the most moving and profound moment
of the drama, these youngsters pledge themselves to their dread-
ful task. Orestes slays his mother’s paramour, and then, on
those same palace steps up which Agamemnon had gone to his
doom, he lets quick death cut short his mother’s appeal to
filial duty. Driven now by the Furies of remorse, Orestes
wanders mad over Greece. Apollo leads him to Athens, and

THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 2^

to divorce justice from righteousness, politics from religion.
The laws of human society are not just if they are less merciful
than the law of Zeus, giver of life.

What Aeschylus said in great drama and high verse, Greek
science repeated in sober but convincing prose. A century be-
fore Aeschylus, great Anaximander had written that things-
‘"return of necessity’’ to the chaos 'whence they had come as
“punishment and reparation to one another for their injustice,
according to the order of time.” This is still the law of tooth
for tooth, of crime for crime; but Anaximander is already
pointing in his cosmology to a larger law, which Socrates and
Plato would show to transcend the earthly passage of crime
and punishment.

Notes for Further Reading

A wealth of literature exists to illustrate the Greek milieu in
which 'Science and philosophy developed. There is a dearth of
studies,' however, relating the development of science and philos-
ophy to the political achievement in which the Greek intellect had
its &st exercise and expression.

1. Murray, Gilbert, Five Stages of Greek Religion. New York,

Columbia University Press, 1925.

2. Aeschylzis, the Creator of Tragedy. Toronto, Oxford

University Press, 1940.

3. Aeschylus. The Tragedies of Aeschylus, trans. G. Murray and

others. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1908.

4. Cornford, F. M., From Religion to Philosophy. Boston, Long-

mans, Green and Company, 1912.

5. Barker, E., Greek Political Theory, 2nd ed. London, Methuen

and Company, Ltd., 1925.

6. Bury, J. B., “The Age of Illumination,’’ The Cambridge Ancient

History. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1927, Vol. V.

7. Sabine, G. H., A History of Political Theory. New York,

Henry Holt and Company, 1937, Part I.

8. Zimmern, A. E., The Greek Commonwealth. London and New

York, Oxford University Press, 1922.

9. Dickinson, G. L., The Geek View of Life. Garden City, Dou-

bleday Doran and Company, 1925.

THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE

31

and Egyptian industrial cities, its development cannot be ex-
plained as an economic phenomenon.

Science of a sort, we know, existed earlier and elsewhere.
Thales of Miletus, the father of western science, is said to have
learned his geometry in Egypt; and his prediction of the solar
eclipse of 585 B.c. testifies to his access to astronomical records
covering some centuries, accumulated perhaps in Mesopotamia,
where astrologer-priests had long plotted the sky. But we
ascribe the creation of science to Ionian Greece because it was
there that the study of natural phenomena was undertaken, as
we say, “for its own sake,” with an increasing recognition
of the universal scope, the theoretical unity, and the distinctive
method of science. Science arose, in short, as a philosophical
enterprise which pursued nothing less than a comprehensive
knowledge of the universe in its entirety.

It i^ unfortunate that we have so little firsthand knowledge
of theije great Ionian pioneers. Of their actual writings and say-
ings we possess next to nothing, all our knowledge being hear-
say. Our chief source is Aristotle, who included in his writings
a short account of his more important predecessors; and
Auristotle wrote not as an historian, but as a special pleader who
wished to show how all earlier science pointed to his own con-
ception of nature, or miserably failed where it did not. His ac-
count of his predecessors is consequently somewhat misleading.
Unfortunately this work of Aristotle was religiously accepted
as an impartial record until very recently, and its misinterpreta-
tion has colored every conception of Greek thought down to
the present time.

Aristotle believed that his own most important contribution
to science was his doctrine of substance; and he accordingly
interpreted each of his predecessors as presaging, more clearly
or more dimly, his own view. Thus the history of Greek
science became in his hands the account of a search for the
underlying and universal substance which inheres in all things.
But to understand the Ionian pioneers of science as merely

THE BIRTH OB SCIENCE 33

the aristocrapc Homeric pantheon some of the ancient local
deities, indigjenous to Gireek soil and dear to the farmers for
whom he wriote. But Hesiod too, even by his effort to revitalize
the Olympian myth, betrayed his awareness of its inadequacy
and assisted itai its obsequies.

The Milesian progenitors of science boldly departed from
this venerable but decadent mythology. They sought a new
vehicle for the expression of their religious faith and for their
perception 'of the religious unity md meaning of the world.
Of this moral and religious motive, in them become realistic,
was bom their science. They used their extended knowledge
of fact, and their deep concern for the moral and political
well-being of man, to create a new form of religion, so dif-
ferent from other religious symbolisms that it has usually been
contrasted with religion. Yet it was religion, because its motive
was refigious. Let us examine for a few moments the thought
of Thaues, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, citizens of Miletus,
who initiated the development which was to become science
and philosophy.

Of Thales, who “flourished,” as the Greeks were wont to
say, about 600 b.c., we know littie. A leader who vainly ap-
pealed for a confederation of Greek cities to meet the menac-
ing power of Persia, a navigator and astronomer, he evidently
elaborated a cosmology the chief lines of which were retained
by his Milesian and later successors. If, as reported, he said,
“All things are full of gods,” he presurnably was proposing a
realistic and empirical study of the forces inherent in things,
since “gods” meant nothing less than “effective powers.” If he
said, “The lodestone is alive, because it has the power to move
iron,” he presumably pointed to a rather striking instance of
this power inherent in all things. Thales proposed, in short, that
we should recognize and acknowledge effective and forceful
being wherever it appears, and not only on Mount Olympus,
the home of the Homeric divinities. If he said, “All things are
water,” he evidently had in mind a cosmic process in which

jm Bmxnictf science 35

||iealm o which everything articulate proceeds, and into

; frbich it'’ again returns.

But we need not be too much concerned with how Anaxi-
mander developed his conception, nor even with what the con-
cq>tion e:^actly was. More important is the sort of conception,
the general approach and method, involved in this new specu-
lation. .We'see here a sustained effort to conceive of nature as a
angle, continuous, and self-regenerating process. We see, in
short, the inauguration of mechanistic science. The mechanism
of natural change, Anaximander taught, is always and every-
wheie simply that of separation and commingling, i.e. of spatial
displacement. Physical science has followed tlm direction of
thought from that day to the present.

Anaximander developed his mechanistic hypothesis on a
grand scale, with superb genius. He conceived not only things,
but worlds or “universes,” to generate and disappear again
the fixad order of timer The initial separation of heavier from
lighter 'elements, he thought, would generate a great vortex
or whirlpool, with the moist earth at the center and the fiery
sun at the periphery. The action of heat on moist earth would
then generate living organisms, first simple but increasingly
complex, man appearing as a late mutation from the fish. Un-
fortunately this evolutionary conception was later submerged
by a more static conception of nature, and not recovered until
the close of our eighteenth century^

But most important and reveafing in Anaximander’s cos-
mology, and as a rule least emphasized, is the teaching con-
tained in the authentic fragment which we have quoted.
^'‘Things pay a penalty and recompense to each other for their
infusnee in the fixed order of time.” The conception of the
change and movement of nature as only a spatial separation
and commingling is a purely meclianistic conception; but this
conception of spatial process is only one half of Anaximander’s
science. It needs to be supplemented by an appreciation of
“the fixed order of time,” i.e. the temporal dimension of fact;

THE BIRTH OF SCaENCE

37

suggest that he really conceived of a single substance, appear-
ing in four diflFerent degrees of denary. It must be remem-
bered that these Milesian thinkers had no idea of empty space.
They believed that the atmosphere extended indefinitely, until
it reached the celestial firmament or “fire.” Nor did they dis-
tinguish air from water vapor, the latter being for them only
very moist air, and air oiily very dry vapor. So the clouds
were “felted air,” according to Anaximenes.

Aristotle says that Anaximenes made air the original ele-
ment, the others being formed by its rarefaction or condensa-
tion. There seems no reason why one element should be so
distinguished, since the cycle of transmutation goes on eter-
nally. But Anaximenes probably started with air, since for
him it occupied most of space, in his description of the cyclical
change. He may have further characterized air, since he said
“/aw h our soul, being air, holds vs together, so do breath
and at,- encompass the universe^ This statement informs us
that these Milesian scientists did not distinguish organic from
inorganic processes, as we do. They did not conceive of a
physical world devoid of life and organic character. Yet apart
from the above statement, we would call Anaximenes’ descrip-
tion of nature a purely physical description.

We have concerned ourselves here only with the largest
conceptions of these Milesian thinkers. We know that they
were active and productive scientists, pursuing special studies;
and advancing special hypotheses in many fields. Thus Anax-
imenes elaborated hypotheses on the origins of wind, rainbows,
and earthquakes; he developed an astronomy according to
which the heavens rotate like a cap or bowl about a disc-shaped
earth, to produce the apparent rotation of the constellations
about the pole-star. But we shall not refer to such special studies
except where they involve a new direction of thought and a
new approach or method in the prosecution of science. What
distinguished these Milesian thinkers from earlier speculators
was their combination of a realistic observation of matters of

THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE

39

law. It was incumbent upon these Greeks, when their free
institutions were menaced by external attack and internal crisis,
to assure themselves of the righteousness and propriety to
nature of these institutions; and they sought this assurance in
a conception of nature which affirmed nature to be every-
where governed by “natural law,” a conception which
stretched Greek justice to the end of infinite space.

Was this procedure, which has been justified by the con-
tinuous development of the natural science it initiated, really
less anthropomorphic than the earlier mythology? If the
01)Tnpian pantheon saw in nature a feudal hierarchy of per-
sonal divinities, did not tliis new cosmology extend to all of
nature the pattern of human relations characteristic of the
Greek city-state? We shall see that the concept of nature,
even in/ its most objective and scientific elaboration, has never
ceased jto be intimately related to the social and political habits
of men. We shall find, indeed, that our conception of external
nature 'so overlaps our conception of human nature that it is
impossible to draw a sharp line dividing man from his natural
environment, or to make our studies of man and of nature
reciprocally exclusive. The studies of man and of nature have
mutually and profitably conditioned each other. The percep-
tion of human relations first quickened the perception of the
coimections among things, and a better understanding of things
then implemented our understanding of man. The word
“anthropomorphic” is used to discredit any conception which
interprets nature by analogy with human and social processes;
but it is doubtful whether we can ever reach a concept of
nature not open to this criticism. Such criticism is perhaps
hypercriticism, in that it overlooks the continuity which re-
lates man to his larger environment, “No art but nature makes
that art,” said Shakespeare.

This Milesian science initiated directions of thought which
it could not follow very far, and raised theoretical problems
which it did not clearly see. Its crucial problem was the rela-

THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE 4^

surface of sixth and fifth century Greece. It was a period wluch
saw many new forms of religious expression and organization,
but these movements break through the surface of recorded
history only here and there. They appear in some of the great
tragedies, e.g. in the Bacchantes of Euripides, and in certain
otherwise obscure developments of science and philosophy;
and they must be called upon to explain the steady drift of
Greek thought toward its issue in mystical Neoplatonism and
Christianity. The movement was a popular one, constituting
an appropriation of religious authority by the people at large,
and suggestmg withdrawal from the established faiths which
had become identified with certain political institutions and
ruling groups. These “mystery-religions,” as we call them be-
cause they usually centered in some purifying and redeeming
sacrament, often claimed only to recover faiths immemorially
old; but there is little doubt, whatever their historical origins,
that th€^ constituted new developments of religious speculation
appropriate to their age. An important shrine was at Eleusis,
outside of Athens; and it is interesting to observe that official
Athens tried to identify the Eleusinian mysteries with itself, as
a means of influence over the Greek people.

Pythagoras does not seem to have made any claim to an-
tiquity for his cult, but seems rather to have presented it as
a new revelation of truth. In the lodges which he founded,
communities of men and women embraced a strict discipline
of life and thought, accepting the authority of their tutors,
and seeking to advance through well-defined stages of moral
and intellectual illumination. In their self-government and self-
discipline they resembled a medieval monastery, as they did
also in their communistic economy. Less clear is the relation
of the lodges to the society outside of them. For a time they
exercised authority over the cities of southern Italy;
came revolt, with Pythagoras forced into exile. Late*'
gained power, but only to be destroyed by a perseoatics would
dispersed their members and their beliefs over mu«lligible being,

THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE

43

motive with religion, something we no longer find it easy to
do. For Pythagoras the scientific pursuit of knowledge was a
religious pursuit of truth, bringing emancipation to the soul.
And still it is, if we would but know science in its wholeness
again.

Music served in this Pythagorean doctrine to bridge the dis-
tance between moral and aesthetic art and descriptive science.
The lilt and fall of melody, the thrill of harmony, depend on
intervals of pitch which in their turn are conditioned by the
mathematical proportions of the instruments used — ^by the
lengths of string in the lute, by the spaced holes of the flute.
The form and substance of music is its proportion, its meas-
ured pattern of tone. Similarly Greek architecture, sculpture,
and verse were of the classical sort which looks to symmetry,
proportion, and repeated measure. It was this classical art
which Pythagoras pursued in his puritan discipline of the in-
dividual life, in his disposition of the communal life of the
lodge, and finally in his scientific exploration of earth and
heaven. The essential form of every sort of being, he taught,
is its mathematical form. Mathematics is the key to every secret
of nature and of life.

So, with the Pythagoreans, science became consciously and
emphatically quantitative, mathematical, precise. Exact science
was bom; and even imong the Pythagoreans this mathematical
science, both pure and applied, advanced to most notable
achievements. Nor may we believe that any spiritual hunger
less acute, less intense, or less abstracted from the world than
this Pythagorean quest of supreme deliverance would have
sufficed to establish firmly, so that it should never again be
lost, this so theoretical and “impractical” wisdom, this mathe-
matical science which has revolutionized human practice, and
which has made of our modem industrialized world a monu-
ment to pure theory.

From that day onward, the study of mathematics would
foster the belief in a realm of ideal and purely intelligible being.

THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE

45

what difficult to grasp. They conceived of every number as
having a definite geometrical shape. For example, there were
“square” and “oblong” numbers; and the number ten was
conceived as a pyramid, made up of four levels containing
respectively four, three, two, and one units. The unit of num-
ber was conceived as a volume possessed of spatial size; and
they accordingly did not sharply distinguish arithmetic from
geometry. Indeed, they took all science to be essentially the
science of numbers, since they supposed every distinct sort
of thing, and even every distinct sort of natural occurrence,
to have “its number,” to know which was to know the essential
character or true form of the thing. Thus there was one num-
ber which was the horse, another which was man, another
which was marriage, and so forth. But we should expect these
errors, to us whimsical, in the first groping but prescient sketch
of what /Was to become the universal mathematical science of
today. Wor were the Pythagorean scientists prevented by their
quaint numerology from mighty achievements in arithmetic,
geometry, and astronomy. The mathematics and astronomy
with which modem science began was essentially their crea-
tion. From the Milesians, and through these mathematical
Pythagoreans, came the systematic study of nature of which
modem science is the faithful development; and about this
backbone of authentic theoretical science was incorporated all
later thought. One can hardly overestimate, therefore, the in-
fluence of Pythagoras upon the intellectual development of
man.

Scarcely less important was his influence upon human prac-
tice. His communal ideal was developed by Plato, through
whom, as well as more directly, it influenced all later political
thought. This ideal was variously pursued in the monastic
movements of later antiquity, in the ecclesiastical system of
medieval Christianity, and in the orders of the Knights Templar
and Rosicmcians, through which it came into Freemasonry
and esifi»-^o the college fraternity, which still curiously pre-

THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE

47

Notes for Fwther Reading

Prior to this century, the historian chiefly depended for his
knowledge of early Greek thought upon Aristotle’s account of his
predecessors. Today he has at his disposal the ‘‘fragments” consist-
ing of quotations and references to the earlier thinkers gathered
from later writings. The task of reconstructing the thought of the
philosopher from these fragments is a difiicult one, comparable with
that of the zoologist who “reconstructs” an extinct animal on the
evidence of a few fossils. The best introduction to this field of
scholarship for the English reader is probably the writings of John
Burnet.

1. Bakewell, C. M., Source Book in Ancient Fhilosophy. New

York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907.

2. Nahm, M. C., ed., Selections from Early Greek Philosophy.

New York, F. S. Crofts and Company, 1934.

3. Burnet, J., Greek Philosophy. New York, The Macmillan Com-

pany, 1914, Vol. I.

^ Early Greek Philosophy y 3rd ed. New York, The Mac-

millan Company, 1920.

5. McClure, M. T., Ttoe Early Philosophers of Greece. New York,

Appleton-Century Company, 1935.

6. Gomperz, Th., The Presocratics, Greek Thinker Sy trans. L.

Magnus. London, J. Murray, 1905, Vol. I.

7. Cherniss, H. F., Aristotle^ s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy.

London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1935-

8. Zeller, Ed., Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy y trans.

L. R. Palmer. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1931,
Parti.

REFLECTION DEEPENS

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vast economy, things being subject to a universal law even as
Greek citizens were willingly subject to their civic laws. All
change, Anaximander taught, is the working in nature of uni-
versal justice, which keeps things within their proper bounds
of space and time, yet gives to each its due. This moral con-
ception was given a more concrete and material expression in
the notion of a world the constituents of which are in flux,
always coming and going, yet which preserve in their totality
a constant balance and design. Thus the measures of water
which become air are balanced by measures of air which be-
come water or fire, the quantitative distribution of nature re-
maining unaltered. This notion is not easy to work out in detail.
Anaximander, we saw, needed a sort of fourth dimension, the
indefinite, in order to explain change. In his view there is no
change except that by which things emerge from or vanish
into this me<fium. Anaximenes had explained all change as rare-
faction or condensation — ^but a rarefaction and condensation
of what? Of some one of the four types of being, or of some
underlying stuff with four recognizable densities? Is ice frozen
water, or is water melted ice? Or are ice and water both phases
of some underlying substance? And in the last case, what is
this substance in distinction from its variable appearances?
The Milesian science raised several problems of this sort, be-
cause of the desire to see in nature, at one and the same time,
both a process of change and a preservation o|.^mething ele-
mental and changeless.

Heraclitus of Ephesus, a city which lay to the south of
Miletus on that same Ionian coast, early in the fifth century
concerned himself with these problems; and the conclusion he
reached makes him /the first consistently dynarmc thinker in
history. It is neitl^ necessary nor possible, Heraclitus con-
cluded, to conc^e of ultimate substance. If there is real and
universal change in the world, and there evidently is, there can
be no real ijNEstance; for by “substance” we mean just what
does not ditfrxTe. What is conserved within change, Heraclitus

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The full implications of dynamism, indeed, are scarcely clear
today, as we shall discover in our concluding chapters. What
does it imply when we make change the most basic and ir-
reducible character of nature? Something we call A becomes
something we call B. If A and B constitute our perspectives
upon this change, A being our view as we look back to its be-
ginnings, B our view as we look forward to its terminus, then
the sole reality confronting us is the process AB. But now let
us universalize this conception, and think of vast reality itself as
a process which is known only in its forward sweep, AB! We
reach a conception of evolution so radical that neither Darwin
nor any other scientist has yet thought to embrace it, and so dis-
turbing that no philosopher has yet steadily contemplated it!

Heraclitus did not proceed so far along the trail he was the
first to blaze. He still subscribed to the Milesian cosmogony,
which conceived the solid earth to be enclosed in permanent
envelopes of water, air, and ethereal “fire.” To get back to this
self-contained cosmos, he conceived aU changes to proceed
reversibly, between two poles or opposites. “Fire lives the death
of air, air lives the death of fire,” he said, meaning that there
is in nature a downward and an upward movement, a reversible
process, which we call “fire” in its upper limits and “air” in
certain lower stages. Heraclitus also said, much as did Anaxi-
mander, “Mortals are immortals, the one living the others
death and dying the others life” This would seem to imply
the immortality of a nonsubstantial soul, our birth and growth
being our gradual transference from some other shadowy
realm; and similarly our aging and death would restore sub-
stance to something in that other realm.

Heraclitus’ controlling purpose, we must believe, was to save
and give force to the conception of universal justice which
Anaximander had magnificently affirmed. According to Anax-
imenes, all change is the condensation or rarefaction of some-
thing indestructible; and this would mean that all change is
merely the redisposition in space of this indestructible matter.
But a science which reduces all change to material displace-

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than outweighed by an intense and, in terms of his own doc-
trine, literally burning faith in the intellectual power of man.
All being, he taught, is some sort of flame; and in man this
flame bums brightest in the intelligence. We know, he said,
three stages of being. There is sleep, there is ordinary waldng,
and there is the completely awakened life of intelligence, which
has to ordinary experience the relation this latter has to the
fitful dream-life of sleep. *^All things tue see 'when cnoake are
death, even as those 'we see in slumber are sleep ... It is not
meet to act and speak like men asleep.” In its full wakefulness,
the spirit of man knows the cosmos and its divine tension. But
man seems to fear this dry, flamelike life of intelligence. He
prefers even to quench the flame in liquor, and to “go tripping,
having his soul moist.” The call to intelligence is also a call to
moral living. In dream, each man enters an idiosyncratic world
private to himself, woven of his personal memories and desires;
in ordinary waking, he shares a common perceptual world
with his fellows; only in the elevated life of thought does he
fully enter into “‘what is common” “The 7nany live as if they
had each an understanding of his ovm . . . Those 'who speak
'with understanding must hold fast to 'what is common as a
city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly; for dl
human laws are fed by the one divine law . . . Wisdom is
one thing, it is to know the thought by which all things are
steered through all things.”

Heraclitus established no school, perhaps because his con-
ception outranged the accustomed limits of the Greek mind;
but his thought had broad influence upon all the later intel-
lectual development. His most important contribution, the con-
cept of an intelligible form which is the measure of change,
and which is itself nonsubstantial, was recovered and fir mly
established by Plato.

'Parmenides of Elea, living, it is believed, a generation later
than Heraclitus, until about the middle of the fifth century,

KEFtECTION DEEPENS

55

were committed to the view that nature is discontinuous, since
they understood all things to be numbers made up of discrete
units possessed of volume. The Eleatic foEowers of Parmenides
elaborated arguments which reduced this view to self-contra-
diction and absurdity. Whether or not the Eleatic system
originated in these mathematical problems, it certainly carried
to its extreme conclusions the opposite view, which denies the
discrete or discontinuous character of nature. The Eleatics be-
lieved that nature is truly one, solid, infinite, without vacuum,
without diversity, without change, without motion. Any other
conception of nature, they taught, ulimately leads to the af-
firmation of discontinuity, with all its consequent absurdities.

The writings of Parmenides, taken by themselves, would
suggest another origin of this Eleatic philosophy. “Whxt is,”
goes the refrain of his poem, “is identical ndth ‘what can be
thought.” “The 'way of truth” in short, is the way of the
intellect; and “the 'way of opinion,” i.e. of error, is that which
puts its trust in the senses. The evidence of the senses and the
evidence of reason conflict; we must choose between the senses
and reason; the senses lead us to self-contradiction, reason gives
us coherent knowledge; so we must resolutely reject sense-
evidence, and cleave only to reason. The Eleatics dismissed, as
a realm wholly made up of illusions, the world which appears
to us in ordinary perception. So Parmenides may have been
only too loyal to the most essential doctrine of the otherworldly
Pythagoras. It is not easy, in our empirical and naturalistic age,
to sympathize with tliis sheer, uncompromising Eleatic ration-
alism — only an occasional thinker subscribes to its logic today.
But we should appreciate its service to the development
of science and thought. In the fifth century b.c., it must be
remembered, science was stiU struggling to establish itself as
a method of inquiry reaching authentic natural knowledge;
and it was becoming evident that science reaches conclusions
far removed from those of cmrent opinion, and sometimes
rather directly contrary to common sense. Would men accept

REFLECTION DEEPENS

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may and must be incorporated into some self-consistent theory.
The other, which is really only the first differently stated, says
that a theory is acceptable oidy where it violates none of the
known facts. But what is “self-consistent theory”.!* Logic is
the large answer to this question. And by what right does the
theoretical scientist require the facts of nature to fit into some
theory? Why should they not refuse to conform to any and
every theory? Philosophy is the long answer to this question-
It is no wonder that Plato, the greatest intellect of antiquity,
esteemed Parmenides the most among all his predecessors; for
Parmenides was the first thinker clearly to perceive the four fol-
lowing facts: one, man always and necessarily brings certain
presuppositions to his perception and understanding of nature;
two, these presuppositions are somehow included in all his
description of nature; three, these presuppositions constitute
a purely rational, nonempirical or nonobservable factor in ail
natural knowledge; four, these presuppositions point to some
peculiar and profound relationship between nature and the
mind of man.

What can be, said Parmenides, is what can be thought. And
what can be thought? Thought, said the Greek, is theoretical
science, reaching a theory which defines, we may believe, the
real, permanent, and universal character of nature. In appear-
ance nature is diverse, variable, shifting, particular, chaotic.
To theoretical study, however, nature is one, same, constant,
tmiversal, perfectly formed. Which shall we believe, the senses
or the intellect? If you are going to think at all, said Par-
menides, think consistently and believe in your thought! Be-
lieve that nature is in truth that one, same, inflexible, and whole
Being which your theory describes! This conclusion, which
identifies thought with theoretical knowledge, which prefers
reason to the senses, which attributes “real being” only to uni-
versal character and which dismisses particular and transient
character as sense-illusion, we properly call rationalism. Par-
menides inaugurated rationalistic philosophy. In so doing, he

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its Milesian and its Pythagorean forms; and it was especially
directed against the dynamic conception of Heraclitus. The
older science found defenders, however, in the atomists, who
turned the edge of the Eleatic criticism by stoutly affirming
what Parmenides had called inconceivable, the existence of
empty space.

A certain Leticippus, who journeyed from Miletus to Elea
and later settled in Abdera in northern Greece, first clearly
enunciated the principle of atomism. “What is not,’’ he said, is
as real as “what is” There is empty space; and the positively
characterized sort of Being required by Parmenides exists in the
form of small atoms, indivisible and eternal as Parmenides sup-
posed, but moving in the void. Of Leucippus and his teaching
we know litde; but the doctrine was elaborated in much detail
by his great disciple, Democritus of Abdera.

Atomistic theory has been of great importance in modem
science, because it can be applied with quantitative methods
allowing mathematical calculation. To what degree the Greek
atomism was mathematical we do not know; it did not estab-
lish any mathematical tradition. It did presuppose, however,
the reduction of all qualitative character to quantitative spatial
differences. The atoms, Democritus taught, are all of the same
stuff; but they differ in size and shape, which results in dif-
ferences of motion. All the observable qualitative difference
and change of nature, excepting of course the qualitative dif-
ference between this atomic stuff and pure space, is due to the
various dispositions of atoms in space. Some of the atoms have
ja^ed edges and cohere firmly together; others are smooth,
and flow freely as liquid or air. Smallest and smoothest of all,
and therefore speediest and most penetrating, are the atoms of
light, the movement of which Democritus identified with con-
sciousness or intelligence.

In this atomistic doctrine, Greek science approached as near
as it was to come to the mechanistic science of today. It pos-
tulated only “atoms and the void,” the atoms being endowed

KEFLECTION DEEPENS 6 1

today, is based upon false suppositions. Heavy atoms would
not fall faster than light atoms, atoms would not “fall” at all
in empty space. But there was one presupposition that entitles
this Greek atomism to respect, and which made it the influen-
tial and profitable conception it was to become in modem
science. This was its demand for completeness of explanation.
Everything in nature, it insisted, happens of necessity, with
adequate cause. Each stage of nature is completely determined
by the preceding stages, and completely determines the suc-
ceeding stages. This insistence upon the complete and per-
fectly intelligible determination of events by events outweighs
all the errors of the Greek atomism. It was this rigorous re-
quirement, suggested certainly in part by Greek atomism,
which made modem science the rigorous and effective mode
of analysis it is. The doctrine that there is no chance in nature
has recently come into question; but. it was this doctrine that
chiefly aided modem science in its advance beyond Greek and
medieval science. We owe much to these men.

There were two other forms of atomism, or at least ap-
proaches to atomism, of sufficient importance to warrant men-
tion here. Empedocles of Acragas in Sicily, a younger con-
temporary of Parmenides, elaborated a system which supposed
that four different kinds of being (the familiar earth, water,
air, and fire of the Milesians) might be conceived to be eternal
and indestmctible, yet to be finely divided into parts which
move concurrently, without the supposition of empty space,
much as the parts of water may be swilled in a bowl. All things
would be explained, in this prototype of modern chemistry, as
compositions of these four elements, atomically divided. Em-
pedocles had discovered by experiment that air, which the
ancients conceived to fiU the space between earth and the
“fiery” heavens, is a material body; and this encouraged him
to believe, in spite of Parmenides, that motion is not incom-
patible with a solid or filled Being, and with the denial of a
vacuum. Earth may move in air. He still required some source

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indeed he holds it to be infinitely divisible, which was the
logical alternative allowed by the Eleatic argument. This bold
step allowed him, he believed, to save all the change and ap-
parent diversity of nature from the destructive Eleatic criticism.
The substantial being of the world, he agrees, cannot change;
but this being may exist in infinite qualitative modes, in all sorts
of mixtures of these modes, and in changing mixmres of them.
Everything will contain some proportion of every mode; but it
will appear to us as that mode of which it contains most. Thus a
white object contains much white, but also a trace of every
other color, even of black. Copper is mostly copper, but every-
thing has in it a little copper, and copper has in it a little of
everything. This seems to us a rather curious and scientifically
useless theory. Its virtue, apparently, was that it allowed the
scientist to trust his senses, while at the same time it admitted
that there could be no change of substance, since Parmenides
had shown such change to be inconceivable. Like Empedocles,
Anaxagoras needed some agency, distinct from these immutable
qualities of nature, to mix and unmix things. He postulated
therefore Nous or intelligence, a nonsubstantial agency re-
sponsible for all motion, and the true ruler of the world. Plato
makes Socrates complain that Anaxagoras called Nous the con-
troller of the world, but that when he treated of any actual
occurrence he explained it mechanically, as a result merely of
the push and pull of things. Perhaps we should understand
Anaxagoras to have subscribed m general to the science of
Anaximander, with some additions of his own which were in-
tended to meet the Eleatic criticism.

In truth, the Milesian science seemed to be self-contradic-
tory. It supposed that the happenings of nature are at
once the result of a cosmic purpose, and the necessary and
intelligible result of the impingement of the parts of nature
against or in each other. Since our own science also shows this
apparent contradiction, we caimot be too rough with the
Adilesians and their apologists. Science, we shall fed, does not

REFLECTION DEEPENS

<55

lowers failed to explain was the “illusion” of change. Change
is real enough, it is a feature of the world. Plato, understanding
Parmenides, would correct this failure.

It may seem strange that in all antiquity there should have
been only two or three men able to grasp this large but simple
thought of Parmenides. But we shall find, as we proceed with
t his study, that there have been only some half-dozen basic
thoughts in all of this intellectual history — ^the bulk of philo-
sophical speculation is the weaving of these few thoughts into
new combinations and modes.

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF ME ‘ 67

restoring in new and powerful form the moral insight of free
Greece, instead of showing that the just law of the city-state
only administered the larger law of nature, the new science
seemed to issue in something unintelligible and morally vacu-
ous. During the second half of the fifth century there spread
over the Greek world a blight of soplristry that was in part
an enthusiastic but superficial absorption of the new science,
in part an open or furtive rebellion which used the new science
to discredit what was sober and sane in Greek life. Heraclitus
was employed to justify a cheap subjectivism or relativism,
making each individual his own truth and his own law. Par-
menides was used as a model for clever logic-choppiag, which
reduced every familiar or established truth to apparent ab-
surdity. The atomistic science could be used to discredit every-
thing but the crassest egoism. This sophistry and skepticism
threatened the very existence of Greek society, and conse-
quently it produced a strong reaction against science. Now that
the old religion was no longer effective, only science remained
to save Greek society. There had to arise, if science and society
were to be saved, a man who could make clear the mord
foundations of science. Such a man was Socrates.

The sophistry and skepticism of the later fifth century would
have not been so dangerous, if Greek society had not already
been thrown into economic and political ferment. Their high
optimism, which had carried the Greek cities to economic ex-
pansion and to victory over Persia, became confused and reck-
lless when the Greeks found themselves confronted with prob-
lems of political and economic reconstruction, now acute and
not to be postponed; and the forces which should have carried
Greece to political unity were dissipated in civic conflict and
abortive revolution. The sophists exploited these social and
political tensions. They were usually clever but irresponsible
men, often without fixed political or other ties, who traveled
as teachers, publicists, and dispensers of the new learning from
city to city, turning their little knowledge to pecuniary profit.

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN

69

Opinion — ^beyond opinion we cannot go. But whose opinion?
That of the expert, surely. And who is the expert in this matter
of the good life? Well, Protagoras suavely suggested, the ex-
pert in this domain is the able and personable individual whose
savoir-faire is his fortune; and for a goodly fee, Protagoras
would transmit his own worldly wisdom to the children of
his auditors. Protagoras with his eloquence and engaging per-
sonality moved through the wealthier Greek cities, filling his
lecture hall and his purse.

Not a bad fellow, as Plato allows in his satire, was Protagoras.
Blufily kind and shrewdly suave, he used a superficial skepti-
cism to expound the truth that what a man can teach, in the
last analysis, is only himself. But what is man — an opinion, or
a truth? “Man is the measure of all things” can be a profound
saying, as Socrates was to show. But in the mouth of Protagoras
the phrase was something less than profound, since it ele-
vated personal talent above a common truth and a common
faith.

Another sophist, the Sicilian Gorgias, also famous for his
oratory, carried this relativism to its final implications in a
skepticism virtually complete. If knowledge is only the opinion
induced in us by temperament and environment, what basis of
judgment among differing opinions can we find? Wliy is expert
opinion best, or today’s opinion better than yesterday’s? The
only criterion Gorgias could find was that of immediacy. We
are certain of what we now immediately sense or feel. But
Isuch sensation, stripped of all conceptual understanding, is in-
communicable, ineffable. We can know the truth only if we
do not speak it; to speak is necessarily to lie.

Socrates was by many of his contemporaries, almost cer-
tainly by those who encompassed his death, accounted just
anodhier sophist. He resembled the sophists in his love of logical
acrobatics, in his love and distrust of the new science, and in
his demand that knowledge should have practical use. He
differed from the sophists in his refusal to exploit intellectual

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN 7 1

Athens and seeing it bent upon false courses, he devoted his
life to arousing in others, especially in the Athenian youth who
looked to him for entertainment and guidance, a moral fervor
for the salvation of themselves and their city. In this work he
neglected his private fortune, but found great satisfaction.
Like his mother, who brought bodies to birth, he said, he was
midwife to men’s thoughts. He wrote nothing because he be-
teved that a disciple is a living book, much more effective
than a written word that cannot answer back.

What was his teaching? The soldier-author Xenophon gives
us anecdotes about the man. Plato puts a whole philosophy
into his mouth. Aristotle, whose biased reports of his predeces-
sors usually misrepresent something factual, says that Socrates
invented the method of definition; and this is a real clue. We
know that Socrates was famous for his irony, that he was
addicted to dialogue with short questions and answers, avoiding
rhetoric, and that he identified virtue with understanding, vice
with ignorance. When we study clues of this sort in the light
of the philosophical development which he so powerftilly in-
fluenced, we are led to certain broad conclusions concerning
the Socratic teaching.

His purpose, it is clear, was to carry to success the intention
of the great pioneers of science, by showing how an inde-
pendent and comprehensive study of nature does in fact reveal
the moral foundation of being, which Greek society was apt

i o call “justice.” The Milesian cosmology had failed in this
Impose, because it developed into the mechanistic science of
?he atomists, and supported the skeptical relativism of the
sophists. Two errors, Socrates believed, were responsible for
this failme. The first was an exaggerated interest in celestial
natme, to the neglect of human affairs. The second was the
failme, in part corrected by Parmenides, to realize the pre-
suppositions or first principles of scientific study. It was this
second error, Socrates saw, that led to relativism and skepticism.
To correct these errors, it was necessary to discover the method

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN 73

as all geometrical figures only specify what we call “geometri-
cal form.” Geometrical theory, although it consists of defini-
tions of specific forms, is tied up by these definitions into a
unitary knowledge, which in its totality defines geometrical
form; and the development of geometry presupposes an initial
insight, which all geometrical science only makes explicit, into
geometrical form as such. What, therefore, is the basic insight
and the constitutive form of our knowledge of man?

It is, Socrates concluded, the insight and the form which
are justice, though perhaps it matters little what we call it.
All the virtues — ^piety, modesty, courage, prudence, shrewd-
ness, poise, etc. — arise from an understanding of the objective
pattern of permanent and healthy human relationships within
which we necessarily live. There are laws of human behavior,
not in the modern sense which would explain every human
act, however abnormal, as the instance of some law, but in the
Greek sense which recognized certain permanent facts to
respect which is to succeed and to violate which is to fail in
all our doing. The basic virtue, consequently, is an insight into
this universal norm of human behavior and social structure.
There is a moral pattern which is proper to human life itself,
and which can be departed from only with disaster to oneself
and society. It is only in appearance that we can “get away
with” violations of this moral law. Since the violation is of our
ovm nature, as well as of social morality, it inevitably exacts its
penalty. The sole wisdom is an understanding of this justice,
'|he sole good is the doing of it. And really to know justice is
automatically to do it, because we necessarily seek our own
well-being. All wrongdoing is just confusion of mind or ig-
norance.

This teaching is so simple that it is easy to overlook its pro-
fundity. To impart it, Socrates had to pursue and pin down
with endless patience the ambiguities and evasions which arise
in human discourse. To discover it, he had to plunge deeper
into the mechanism of human thought than anyone before

SOCXATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN 75

descriptive science — ^we have no other science. In man, Socrates
concluded, this universal norm becomes the norm of human
behavior, a moral habit incorporated into good custom and
true law.

Socrates paid for this teaching with his life. Bom ten years
after the final defeat of Persia, he saw Athens rise to power,
rebuild itself in incomparable beauty, and make itself the bril-
liant but hectic metropolis of that world. He loved Athens as
he loved nothing else under God, not for its glory but for its
stout courage and humaneness. He belonged to a group who
were critical of the new imperialistic Athens; who believed that
Pericles, compelled to depend increasingly upon chauvinistic
and radical support for his liberal leadership, was leading
Athens astray; who wished somehow to preserve the sober,
homespun Athens of the past, even in building the new. Then
Socrates and his friends saw these fears realized in the debacle
and horror of the long war, and in the disraption of Athens
between its “democratic” and “aristocratic” factions. When
the reactionary faction revolted and seized power, Socrates
incurred its anger by refusing to participate in its purge of
innocent opponents. When the more democratic faction re-
gained power, Socrates incurred its anger too by refusing, as
officer for the day, to let the aristocratic generals who had lost
a battle be made scapegoats for administrative inefficiency. So
Socrates himself became the scapegoat. The most truly pious
.of men was charged with impiety or blasphemy, the man who
had devoted his life to restore in Athenian youth the old faith
was charged with perverting youth. In vain the fathers and
brothers of these youths spoke for Socrates. In a packed court
and in one day he was indicted, tried, and condemned to
death.

Plato has given us an account of that trial. He did this in
the Apology, in which surely only a scholarship become hyper-
critical can see anything but verbatim report. Socrates, writes
Plato, undertook his own defense, because his inner voice had

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN 77

His intention was successful, but not in the way he hoped.
When justice errs, the accused becomes judge and the court is
the accused. The Greek people, learning that the most just of
men had been destroyed in the name of justice, renounced
their allegiance to the state and its law, and looked to another
law, not mediated by man, for their salvation. They put law
into the skies, and made God their judge. It is we later peoples
who, after twenty centuries, reap the fruits of Socrates’ martyr-
dom, by honoring again a human law that can, if man will,
dispense the awful yet merciful justice that is God.

We should spend more thought today upon the life, work,
and death of this man; for time has brought our larger civil-
ization through half its circle, to that selfsame place where
stood in antique civilization the upright figure of Socrates. Our
political, practical, and theoretical problems are almost identi-
cally those which he and Greece encountered. We too have
established a great society upon a political constitution. We
have not yet, as did the Greeks, read that constitution into the
larger univMse, to find in that universe, by scientific study, a
larger Jaw. We have proceeded rather in the other direction.
Having received from the Greeks their science, with its high
vision df a universal and natural justice, we established our
political constitution upon that faith, in the doctrine of in-
alienable rights invested in the individual “by the laws of Nature
and of Nature’s God.” But popular science has repeated in the
modem period, only more slowly and relentlessly, the down-
ward curve which it described in earlier antiquity. It has
translated the natural law which is the divine justice of the
world into a formula which is but the summary of what things
do and are, a law which is obeyed in death as in life, in disease
as in health, in crime as in community, in madness as in sanity.
Once again, as in the later fifth century b.c., the foundations
of the world are convulsed, and sophists thrive upon moral and
intellectual confusion. Truth, we are told, is just someone’s
opinion, the perspective upon fact of some economic or other

SOCRATES: THE WISEST AND BEST OF MEN yp

3. Gomperz, Th., Qreek Thinkers, txans. G. G. Berry. London,

J. Murray, 1914.

4. Zeller, Ed., Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy. New

York Henry Holt and Company, 1931, Part II, Chaps. I
and IL ^

S' Taylor, A. E., Socrates. New York, Thomas Nelson and Sons,
1939.

PLATO; THE MASTERMIND 8 1

word into the mouth of Socrates. Those who have assumed
that Plato wished merely to exploit the fame of Socrates in
order to advance his own doctrines forget that this fame was
still infamy when the earlier dialogues of Plato were written;
and one wonders a little at certain scholars who imply that
the work of the greatest intellect of antiquity was bmlt upon
a literary deceit.

Although Plato was given to writing, he shared with Socrates
a distrust of the written word. “One statement^'' he wrote
when he was already old, “/ cm make in regard to all who
have written or may write with a claim to knowledge of the
subjects to which 1 devote myself. . . . Such writers cm, in
my opinion, have no real acquaintance with the subject. 1 cer-
tainly have composed no work in regard to it, nor shall I ever
do so; for there is no way of putting it into words like other
studies. Acquaintance with it must come rather after a long
period of attendance or instruction in the subject itself and of
close compmionship, when suddenly, like a blaze kindled by
a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and becomes self-
sustaining.” Without pretending to knowledge of this esoteric
teaching, we can learn the steps by which it was approached,
since Plato tells us of these himself in his many dialogues.

The most important of Plato’s writings for our knowledge of
the man and his thought is the book-length dialogue The Re-
public, in which he discourses of justice and presents his pic-
ture of the good and healthy state; and the first importance of
this work is its frank association of philosophical speculation
with a practical political purpose. The primary purpose of
Plato, and of the Academy which he founded, was political
education; nor did Plato ever conceive of a science not in-
spired and controlled by a political ideal. It is one and the same
faith, he knew, which promotes the pursuit of justice and the
pursuit of truth; and the Republic of Plato, perpetuating this
faith which had created Greek science and for which Socrates
had lived and died, has molded all subsequent history, by in-

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

83

fied in some way with the state and its institutions. They seek
fame, honor, recognition; and their courage and dutifulness
express this civic loyalty and ambition. This class Plato would
house in a closed community, with no private property and
without separate famiUes. It would undergo a rigorous physical
tr aining and be liberally educated in the culture and ideals of
its people. Its annual matings, scientifically managed to pro-
duce an optimum progeny, would be ritualized so as to become
a civic and religious sacrament; and the children from these
unions would be fostered as wards of the state. Plato, astonish-
ingly in that day, was a convinced feminist who would open
every office to both sexes. The tliird class of citizens, so small
as to constitute a council, would be obtained by selecting the
best of the second class, and subjecting them to further scien-
tific training and to trials in practical administrative work.
T his council, self-perpetuated, would shape administrative
policies and be the absolute rulers of the state. Plato would
have the state remain small, not exceeding a few thousand
citizens. He would keep it poor, in order not to incite envy,
and warlike, in order to discourage aggressors.

In this ideal and secure state, Plato says, we can at last dis-
cover the seat of justice. Justice is the form or unitary pattern
of this ideal society, in its proper balance of the three classes,
a balance which secures the smooth fulfilment of the functions
upon which society depends for its existence and health.
\^ere the middle group is too strong, the state becomes a
Sparta wholly geared for war. Where the bourgeoisie is too
powerful, one gets an Athens or Corinth intent only upon
economic ends and neglectful of the political needs of the
state. But the well-balanced society will be a secure and truly
prosperous polity.

The democrat of today can scarcely take seriously this
Platonic utopia, which would permanently locate the common
responsibility of government in a self-perpetuating privileged
class. To sympathize in any way with Plato’s conception we

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

85

whether it be the life of French peasants, of Middletown, of
Washington or London “society,” or of a Czaiist nobility that
has lost its honor.

The next wider environment, which differs from the nar-
rower more importantly in its structure than in its size, is that
of politically organized society. Many men and women are of
that soldierly and administrative type which spontaneously
identifies itself with some large institution and is happy only
in its service. These people are loyal, reliable, dutiful, but
essentially stereotyped and unstatesmanlike, so that a people
ruled by its bureaucrats is never well governed. They are reac-
tionary because their whole response is to the actuality of the
state or church or other visible institution. They serve the
law in its letter, they revere the state in its de facto governors.
They are the sticklers for privilege, for custom, for a morality
that is uncritical of itself.

But finally there are those who respond to a widest environ-
ment, wider than society, embracing ^ humanity and whatever
is more than that. This response to the largest environment is
expressed in creative art, science, and religion — ^not, be it
emphasized, in the stereotyped art, science, or religion which
reveres the established forms of these interests more than the
reality which they seek to embrace. All three interests are
really a worship of truth, or of That Nameless which to know
is truth — ^this is why Plato said that the knowledge he was
concerned with could not be put in a book. These creative
people are apt to be rather oblivious of political, economic,
and domestic affairs; but it is their creative power alone,
brought into our political economy, which lets us see society
in its larger international context, so that we can observe its
controlling conditions and its health or disease, and in the
light of this dispassionate and disinterested vision steer it aright.
Part of this vision, of course, is the perception of the structure
of society itself, in its constituent elements of which Plato
tries to tell us; but really to understand, to hold fast, and to

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

87

which we should aspire, the standard by which we must ap-
praise existing conditions, and the guide to whatever justice
we can achieve. We cannot aspire, appraise, or strive without
a clear and intelligible ideal.

This idealism is the key to Plato’s general philosophy. Look
again at the psychology of the Repuhlicl The bourgeois citi-
zen enjoys a good life only if the conditions of domestic and
industrial economy are secured by stable government and just
law. The soldier-administrator can pursue his ambition and
have an object for his loyalty only in a firmly established and
wisely governed state. The wise governor owes his wisdom
to an intelligence of that universal law which his science dis-
covers and his statesmanship applies. Universal law makes
science possible, science makes the statesman possible, the
statesman makes the state possible, the state and its order make
industry and the family possible. The individual can function
properly and hope to secure health and happiness only in an
ordered community and an ordered world. In an imjust com-
munity the just man must choose, as Socrates had to choose,
between doing injustice and suffering disgrace and death. The
good life is not merely an individual matter. It presupposes a
good society and a good world. The nearer and the remoter
environments both condition individual existence; and life can
be lived intelligently only if the environment can be understood
and its conditions met. Knowledge and a knowable world are
presupposed by even the most individual human effort. Justice
and law must rule the world — yet not rule it absolutely, because
the individual must still be free to deal justly or unjustly, to
act intelligently or blindly. The law of nature must be a per-
suasive law, a norm which conditions prosperity and which
ultimately conditions existence, but which does not imm ediately
compel.

This is Plato’s idealism. The law of nature, it says, is not
just the summary of what goes on in nature. The law of
nature is the law of health, of life, and of existence. (Much of

PLATO: THE 2V1ASTERMIND

89

vast economy which is the cosmos. In the physical realm,
certain constancies of setting- and rhythm provide the condi-
tions of organic life; and animal and vegetable life reciprocally
condition each other. Each natural species, indeed, is condi-
tioned by many and perhaps by all other species, so that each
species has its place, supporting and supported, within the uni-
versal economy. All existence is a commerce or symbiosis.
Simply by remaining true to its type and by perpetuating its
type, each individual thing subscribes to the cosmic order.
Fidelity to type is obedience to cosmic law.

Man’s true law is his fidelity to man, i.e. to his human char-
acter. Man is distinguished from the higher animals by his
social nature — society is a form and condition of humane living.
But man is even more basically differentiated from all other
species by his intellectual faculties, arising from his sensitive-
ness to the. largest environment about him, which is what
makes human society possible. It is his scientific intellect that
makes him moral; for it is through intellect alone that he per-
ceives the universal plan, and learns that his integrity to human
nature is his whole and sufficient health. To do evil is quite
literally to die, since it is to become what one is not. And
Socrates was therefore right when he equated righteousness
vdth understanding and identified vice -with ignorance.

In the cosmos, the law appears as the great conservator,
perpetuating the species of physical and organic nature and
holding them within their appropriate bounds and to their
mutual service. But in the indi-vidual, the law appears as a
creative force, since it is through the individual alone that the
cosmic pattern is continually regenerated in existent nature.
Plato’s most compelling paragraphs are his descriptions of the
creative working of the law in ourselves. Even in its healthy
appetite for good food, he might have said, the body seels
its re-creative sustenance. In the passion of sex, he does say,
it seeks its reproduction in the beautiful mate, with uncon-
scious forethought for sound and healthy progeny. When ap-

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

91

having its source in the local and transient things which are the
constituents of nature. At some risk we may call this concep-
tion a dualism of Form and matter — ^this name at least is pref-
erable to “The Theory of Ideas.” In the Tvmaeus, an important
dialogue in which Plato is careful not to make use of Socrates,
but advances his teaching merely as an hypothesis incapable of
strict demonstration, a dualism of this sort is presented. The
topic discussed is the creation of the world. The creative
process of nature may be undeKtood, we are told, as the work-
ing of a great demiitrge, a creative god immanent to the world.
This divine artisan has at his disposal a material stuff, which is
described somewhat atomistically. In incessant and chaotic mo-
tion, and divided into small and inert particles, matter is ruled
by mechanical necessity and is devoid of all large and intelli-
gible design. Matter is in itself neither good nor bad, it is
aesthetically and morally characterless or neutral. Matter is
the “formless” not because it has no character whatsoever,
but because its character is so local, shifting, and infinitely
diversified that it cannot be steadily contemplated nor intelli-
gibly defined. The creative demiurge has, however, a model
accessible to his intelligent vision. This model is a transcendent
Form, wholly beautiful, constant, and supremely intelligible.
Gazing upon this Form, he shapes mechanical matter, so far as
necessity allo’ws, into a material replica of the Form. What re-
sults is the existent cosmos, compounded of Form and matter, of
stability and motion, of sameness and difference, of universal in-
telligible character and particular visible character, of beauty
and defect, of success and failure, of goodness and decay, of
truth and error. This divinity immanent to the world, Plato
makes clear in other writings, indwells all things. It works in
each thing as the response of that thing to the cosmic Form,
and as a striving of that thing to be its true self, in fidelity to its
type. In man, this response and this effort are enlarged to be-
come a creative adoration of the cosmic Form. Man’s fidelity
to type is his fidelity to his reason, which is his cognition of

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND 93:

which number itself devolves. But in accepting diis Eleatic
insight, Plato did not renounce the Milesian science, which
Heraclitus had shown to presuppose the radical and irreducible
reality of change and motion. He accepted something also
from the atomists, who had made clear the effectiveness of
even the smallest and most particular constituents of nature
in the determination first of their own destinies, and through
these of the larger courses of nature. All of these apparently
contradictory insights Plato recovered, reconciled, and con-
served for posterity in that stupendous, simple, and in some
respects irrefutable doctrine of Form and matter. At one
stroke, leaning upon Socrates, Plato established again a theoret-
ical science that was about to dissipate into paradox, sophistry,
and skepticism. At one blow, Plato restored faith in the human
intellect and its power to know truth, and propelled science
up all the centuries to ourselves and the ages to come. And in
restoring to man his intellectual faith, Plato restored to him
also his moral faith, by showing that the world known to the
intellect is a world compact of beauty and goodness, and con-
tracted indissolubly with justice. After six centuries of modem
criticism, criticism which in certain of its conclusions is alto-
gether cogent, Plato looms larger today in human history than
ever before; for criticism, finally, can only enlarge, not mini-
mize, that Platonic truth. More than Plato man may hope to be;
but to be less than Plato is degenerate. Such is the irreversibility
of creative thought.

It was necessary, of course, not only to devise this great
conception compounding existent nature out of Form and
matter, but to demonstrate its truth. The arguments used to
do this were of two kinds. One of them applied the Socratic
irony; it pretended to accept the skeptical or sophistical con-
ceptions of those who denied truth or justice, and proceeded
to show how even these conceptions illicitly assumed what
they denied. Thus in the opening books of the Republic the
sophist who insists that justice is only the legitimization by

Plato: the mastermino

95

introduce them to mathematical science, i.e. to natural science.

Mathematics is not, however, the end for Plato of our intel-
lectual study. Just as we can break down the visible patterns
of things into a few elementary geometrical figures, and then
reduce our definitions of these to a number of axioms, so we
can proceed upwards from this set of mathematical axioms to
a still smaller number of metaphysical principles; and ulti-
mately, Plato believed, one reaches an insight into that ineffable
Being out of which all articulate and definable form proceeds.
Into this dialectic, which was the culmination of Plato’s teach-
ing, and which carries the thinker to a religious vision of the
Good, we will not go, since it is that truth which Plato said
could not be imparted by words. But it is evident that Plato
found in mathematical science, with its rational certainty and
its universal applicability, the great bastion of his mord and
intellectual faith.

In both of these arguments Plato leans to the rationalism of
Parmenides, who first perceived clearly the theoretical form
of science, and showed that it presupposes a unity of character
in nature which is the object of science. But Plato combines
the Eleatic insight with the insight of Heraclitus, and refuses
to deny reality to motion, change, and diversity. These three
thinkers, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato, showed the limits
within which aU theoretical speculation about nature and man
must move. Change and. constancy, individual and universal
character, motion and immobility must all be allowed reality.

The Platonic metaphysics implies a Platonic theory of
knowledge, or epistevwlogy. Plato’s epistemology is a modified
rationalism, not the stark rationalism of Parmenides. Reason,
he taught, is the faculty which discloses to us, within the
transient actualities apprehended by the senses, the true forms
of things. Between ordinary sensation and scientific intuition
there are intermediate stages in common sense, ordinary under-
standing, and artistic vision. Plato did not despise the senses.
He made them a condition of all natural knowledge, providing

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

97

instances of general laws or specific processes, since this is the
only way we can initially understand them. But why do in-
dividuals so conform? What is our explanation of this deference
of particular events to universal norms or general forms?

Again and again in his writings Plato takes up this problem,
only to let it fall again unsolved. There is no solution, he con-
cludes, to this mystery upon which all theoretical knowledge
and all intelligent conduct is established. Nor, we know after
two thousand years of meditation upon this problem, is any
solution possible so long as we identify knowledge, as did
Plato, with a purely theoretical science or a purely theoretical
philosophy. We can say with Plato that thmgs “participate”
somehow in general forms; but how they do so, whether the
general form molds the individual thing or the individual thing
pursues the general form, we cannot say. Only ask this ques-
tion and inquiry is balked, reason is stopped in its tracks.

But this core of opaque unintelligibility at the very heart of
the Platonic system has serious consequences. We do not get
natural science simply out of mathematical axioms and their
applications. To apply mathematics we must have prepared
the way for it by an initial analysis of observable fact, in which
we distinguish by means of qualitative differences certain
types of things or processes. How can we be sure that the
types we distinguish are the real forms, the authentic “species”
of physical or organic nature? The Platonic rationalism pre-
supposes, we see, a kind of foreknowledge of the “real” con-
stitution of nature, prior to all experience of the individual
constituents of nature and their behavior. This implication
Plato duly recognized in his doctrine of reminiscence. Some-
how, he suggested, we must bring with us, perhaps from an
earlier existence, our infallible insight into the true forms of
nature. Science is not a discovery, but only a rediscovery in
particular situations of a cosmic structure the knowledge of
which is given to us with intelligence itself.

Thus Plato did Hot avoid, in the last resort, certain errors

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

99

tional mechanism of society, and which appears as a balance or
proportion sustained amongst the parts of society. It is within
this constitutional form that must proceed all of the life of
society, if society is to remain healthy and not decay nor rup-
ture. Further, this constitutional form appears on a larger scale
as the constitution of the cosmos itself, in a functional mecha-
nism which preserves the cosmic economy by stabilizing, “in
the fixed order of time,” the species of nature and their recipro-
cal dependence. This cosmic constitution is revealed to the
human reason as a knowledge of universal Form, which allows
man to pursue a theoretical science, discovering and defining
that Form in its specific manifestations and its causal sequences.
Finally, we found a crucial inadequacy in Plato’s thought, the
consequence of which is an inescapable dogmatism. Plato’s
error, we shall discover at the close of our review of modem
philosophy, was to fail to distinguish the forms of society and
science with sufficient rigor from the content which is condi-
tioned by those forms. He did not distinguish the political con-
ijl^tution from the changing body of custom and law; and he
did not distinguish theoretical form from the changing content
of specific hypothesis. He did not discover, in short, a cosmic
law which hes beyond the specific processes of nature. But
this is to anticipate.

There was another Plato, whose aesthetic and religious in-
sight always impelled, yet could never completely contain it-
self within, the scientific studies of this supreme Greek intel-
lect. This other Plato occasionally took the pen from the
scientist’s fingers, and adjoined to the rigorous conceptual
analysis a parable or myth, using artistic or religious symbolism
to suggest a vision that intellect could approach but not com-
municate. The myths of Plato may have preserved some of the
imaginative conceptions used in the Pythagorean cult or in the
mystery-religions. They treat of the immortality of the indi-
vidual soul, of the day of judgment in which each individual

PLATO: THE MASTERMIND

lOI

tant for its influence on medieval thought, and for its conception of
the relation of eternal form to moving existence.

The Republic, whether we attribute its teaching to Socrates or
to Plato, remains the supreme Greek classic and the best introduc-
tion to Plato himself. The Epistles, especially the seventh, shed ligjit
on Plato’s political activity.

1. The Dialogues of Plato, trans. B. Jowett. New York, Random

House, Inc., 1937.

2. Field, G. C., Plato md His Contemporaries. New York, E. P.

Dutton and Company, Inc., 1930.

3. Taylor, A. E., Plato. New York, Dial Press, Inc., 1936.

4. Ritter, C. The Essence of Plato's Philosophy, trans. A. AUes.

New York, Dial Press, Inc., 1933.

5. Gomperz, Th., Greek Thinkers, trans. G. G. Berry. London,

J. Murray, 1912, Vols. II, III.

6. Zeller, Ed., Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, trans.

L. R. Palmer, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1931,
Part II, Chap. III.

7. Woodbridge, F. J. E., The Son of Apollo. Boston, Houghton,

Mifflin Company, 1929.

8. Demos, R., The Philosophy of Plato. New York, Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1939.

9. Post, L. A,, Thirteen Epistles of Plato. London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1925.

THE SCIENCE OF ARISTOTLE

103

different conception of nature; and with Plato Aristotelianized,
and Aristotle Platonized, it becomes well-nigh impossible to
demarcate clearly the two thinkers.

Aristotle entered Plato’s Academy at the age of eighteen.
He came from Macedon, the rising monarchy to the north,
where his father was court physician; and he resided at the
Academy no less than twenty years. It is astonishing, there-
fore, to find in Aristotle’s many allusions to Plato o^y what
might have been derived from Plato’s published writings, as
we know them today, and little reference to that intimate
esoteric teaching which Plato held to be incommunicable in-
books. Aristotle does record, it is true, a public lecture given
by Plato on the subject of the Good; but he tells us only that
Plato became very mathematical, mystifying his audience.
Aristotle’s statements about Plato are those of a hostile, un-
sympathetic, and not too well-informed critic. The twenty
years he spent at the Academy covered the last years of
Plato’s long life, when the aged thinker may well have
retired from active teaching, and been immersed in public
affairs.

We should emphasize perhaps the early training of these two
men, which inspired totally different interests and approaches
to science. Plato was by birth a free and aristocratic Greek
citizen, whose life and thought were dominated by his political
purpose, which was the redemption of the city-state, and
whose scientific training was in the mathematical tradition of
Socrates, the Eleatics, and the Pythagoreans. Aristotle was a
Macedonian subject who spent most of his life as an alien
resident of Greek cities, whose admiration of the city-state
was that of a disinterested outsider and beneficiary, and whose
earliest scientific training was biological, with probably some
knowledge of atomistic and Milesian theory. Aristotle, more-
over, came to Athens when that city had definitely failed in
its struggle for power, and when the city-states were over-
shadowed by the rising monarchy to the north. Libertarian

THE SCrENCaE OF ARISTOTLE

105

could be converted by a simple modification into a nontngthe-
matical system adapted to his own interest and method. . ,

What we do mean by a development} A development is a
temporal change having a beginning and an end. It is a unit of
process, a real unit of change. Secondly, it is a recognizable and
describable process, one that recurs again and again at dif-
ferent times and places. And thirdly, it is a cumulative or di-
rected process, one which points throughout its course to a
certain definable goal or terminus. In organic nature develop-
ments are ever3rwhere evident and often striking. Every living
creature proceeds through such a development from its incep-
tion to its maturity. Those organisms which pass through one
and the same type of development we classify as a species.
Thus the diverse species of organic nature indicate the dif-
ferent sorts of organic development known to us. Today we
do not usually speak of species when studying physical, geo-
logical, or astronomical fact, because we conceive physical
nature to be inorganic. But Aristotle wished to establish his
whole science upon organic concepts such as development,
species, etc.; and he accordingly applied the concepts in every
field, to physical as well as to organic phenomena.

It is by comparing individual animals and plants, in their
visible anatomies and developmental processes, that we classify
them into species. We may then compare these species, placing
those which are most like each other in groups which we call
genera (plural of genus). We can then compare genera, to
reach higher “orders,” “families,” “kingdoms.” The animal and
vegetable “kingdoms” have been very exhaustively classified
in this way. The complete classification has the appearance of
a genealogical tree, which Darwin showed it literally to be, be-
cause the observable similarities among animals and plants,
especially their similarities of development, are clues to their
evolutionary origins. But imagine this specific and generic
classification extended over all of nature, to cover also inorganic
nature! Each organic and inorganic thing will now be under-

THE SCIENCE OF ARISTOTLE

107

never overlook specific differences. It is a fact that the science
of living organisms cannot ignore the specific forms of nature.

But we know today that this study of the specific forms of
organic nature leads us onward to the concept of evolution, and
to an evolutionary science discovering the origins and muta-
tions of the species of life. Return for a moment to the con-
cept of development, which is the generative idea in Aristotle’s
science, and try to universalize this concept! A development
is a directed succession of stages a b c d,d being regarded as
the definitive stage towards which a, b, and c are directed. To
universalize this concept, you must conceive of the universe
in its entirety, and in its whole history, as a vast directed ad-
vance AB C Di You must conceive, that is to say, of a single
vast universal evolution, advanced by every occurrence that is
or was or will be. Such a conception is impossible, you may
say, since every evolution requires a context or environment
conditioning it and causally explaining it. The universe as an
entirety cannot evolve, since by definition it has no external
context which might condition its evolution. It may be argued
that universal evolution is conceivable; but this is irrelevant
to our topic, which is the science of Aristotle. Aristotle did
not only reject the notion of a universal evolution, he re-
jected the hypothesis of an evolution even of species. He
allows, that is to say, only individuals to develop; and he
allows them to develop only within the limits of their specific
forms. Any individual aberration from the normal line of de-
velopment, or from the fixed form and behavior characteristic
of the species, is for him an accident devoid of scientific
significance, and defying explanation. Aristotle’s controlling
conception is that of a world composed of a large number of
eternal and immutable species, made up of successive individ-
uals which can only be understood as instances or specimens
of these species; and so to understand things, allocating them
to species and defining these species, he took to be the sum of
science.

THE SCIENCE OF AMSTOTLE IO9

senses then again discovered in particular instances. But Ans-
totle can insist that the specific forms of nature are apparent
to the eye, even as they inform individual things. We actually
see dog or cat, and immediately recognize the individual as
a member of its species, although reasoning may be required
to reach a satisfactory definition of the species. In this doctrine
Aristotle is more empirical than Plato, in that he enlarges the
role of sense-observation in science. Aristotle also believed,
however, that the problem of the relation of form to matter dis-
appeared in his mode of explanation. He held that the specific
form appears in the development of the individual thing; and
this would mean that specific forms are already resident in the
matter which is informed by them. Aristotle, we earlier men-
tioned, believed his concept of substance, by which he meant
this union of form and matter in existent things, to be his great-
est contribution to science; and we must examine this teaching
more closely.

The specific forms of nature, he says, although they are
immutable and eternal, do not exist apart from the things they
inform. They are not transcendent, like the Form of Plato, but
have their whole being within the existent and material world.
Form exists only in some material realization; and matter exists
only in some specifically organized form. This would mean
that the process of development is really the development of
matter into some specific form; and this would seem to require
the assumption of as many sorts of matter as there are specific
forms or species. Aristotle is moving towards a materialistic
philosophy in which form would be only the complete mani-
festation of matter. He accepts this implication when he says
that matter is potential of form, form being the realization of
these potentialities, or potencies, of matter. Yet he never re-
linquishes the Platonic view, which gave to form a being in its
own right, and which saw in matter only the material which
is shaped by form. He swings between, or overlaps, the op-
posed views of “formism” and materialism. Thus his science

THE SCIENCE OF AMSTOTLE

III

{j,.e. not formal), at least two particular causes being requited
to bring about a particular change. Thus it is stated that a body
will change its velocity only if some other body exerts a force
upon it. Aristotle’s doctrine, it was finally perceived, really
precludes and defeats causal analysis. A “specific form” is
initially just the similarity between individuals “of the same
species”; and we cannot suppose that the similarity of a thing
with other things is what determines its behavior. A pup does
not develop into a dog because there are other pups, similarly
developing into dogs. If this were the case, the death of all
other pups would require the death of this pup. However, it
remains true that we discover the particular causes of natural
occurrence by taking note of such similarities. If we want to
know the particular causes of a particular pup’s death, we look
around for other instances of animal mortality, similar to and
illuminative of this instance. This suggests that there is some
mysterious connection between the two large facts of similarity
and causation in nature. We may not discuss the nature of this
connection here, since our purpose is only to show how Aris-
totle confused the concept of causation.

These very general doctrines concemiug substance, poten-
tiality, development, causation, and the relation of form to
matter are presented by Aristotle in an introductory work
which he entitled “first philosophy.” We will understand the
doctrines better by noting Aristotle’s application of them in
special fields; but before we turn to these special applications
we should take note of Aristotle’s logic, which in its prescrip-
tion of the method to be used in all scientific research consti-
tuted a most general application of his metaphysical teaching
or “first philosophy.” Aristotle has often been called “the
founder of logic,” presumably because his logical treatises
were long regarded as the definitive manual of this study,
which they remaiued until the close of the nineteenth century.
The EHeatics who followed Parmenides have probably more
title to the fame of having originated logic; but Aristotle

the science of ARISTOTIE II j

second syllogism may be symbolized: All S is Af, no P is so
no 5 is P. Aristotle regarded the first type of syllogism, that of
the form: All S is Al, all Al is P, so dl S is P, as the correct
scientific form of argument or exposition, to which all the
other forms are auxiliary. The only reason for preferring this
type would seem to be its conformity with the doctrine of
definition. If the members of a group S belong to a certain
species M, and the species M belongs to the genus P, then the
conclusion of the syllogism will state that the group S belongs
to the genus P. The letters S and P are chosen to indicate
respectively the Subject and the Predicate of the conclusion;
and M indicates the Middle term, which by appearing twice,
once in each premise, relates the premises to each other. Aris-’
totelian logic is essentially an exhaustive survey of the syl-
logisms which arise when we abide by certain formal require-
ments, limiting us to sentences of the forms: All S is M,noS
is M, some 5 is M, some S is not M. These syllogisms can then
be classed as valid or invalid, according as the conclusion is or
is not required by the premises.

The third doctrine is that of the ccttegories. Aristotle held
that all sentences can be classified into eight or perhaps ten
sorts of sentence, according as to whether they predicate of
some subject its substance, its quantity, its quality, its position
in space or time, its action, its eiqjosure to action, etc. The
categories would seem to indicate the ways in which the verb
to be was used in the Greek language (this is a cat, here are
fourteen, this is black, it is on the table, etc.) . The doctrines
of definition and of the syllogism support one another; but the
doctrine of the categories seems to be independent, and to
presuppose a different conception of nature and scientific
method.

The Aristotelian logic remained authoritative until a gen-
eration ago, and it still has its adherents. Most contemporary
logicians regard it as a very hmited, wooden, and artifidfi
exposition of the formal properties of language. It is not true,

THE SCIENCE OF ARISTOTLE

II5

illustrate his basic concept of organic development. He dis-
tinguished some organic functions as vegetative, others as
animal because they involve locomotion and sensaton. In man,
he tplls us, the vegetative functions support the locomotive
and sensitive animJ functions, which in turn support the in-
tellectual functions distinguishing man from his fellow crea-
tures. Aristotle thinks of the development of the vegetative,
animal, and intellectual functions as resulting from three dis-
tinct potencies. The matter which enters into living organisms,
he says, is of a special sort, being composed of the four material
elements (earth, air, water, fire) together with a portion of a
special sort of matter, the quintessence, which otherwise ap-
pears only in celestial bodies. Thus Aristotle explicitly postu-
lates at least three sorts of matter. There is the ordinary terres-
trial matter which we should call inorganic; there is the celestial
quintessence; and then there is organic matter, blended of
these two.

Aristotle’s biology is basic to his psychological, ethical, and
political studies. We remember Plato’s psychology, which dis-
tinguished in human individuals three sorts of response to
three successively larger environments: The response to the
immediate environment stimulates the productive and pro-
creative functions, the response .to the state stimulates the social
and political functions, and the response to the universe stimu-
lates those scientific and religious interests which are the pre-
requisite, Plato believed, of true statesmanship. Aristotle seems
initially to accept this psychology. In his biology he defined
man as “the animal endowed with reason,” i.e. the species which
adds to the vegetative and animal faculties that of reasoning;
and when he comes to discuss man further, he defines him as
“the political animal,” which would imply that he, like Plato,
saw in man’s political activity his distinctive character. Further,
Aristotle presents ethics, the inquiry into what is right and
wrong in human behavior, as only a part of the larger study
of man which is political theory. We are accordingly surprised

THE SCIENCE OF ARISTOTLE

1 19

We have not yet considered Aristotle’s physical science,
where the limitations of his method are most apparent. Modem
science has not recognized species in physical nature; and
Aristotle’s insistence upon finding them there takes him to
strange conclusions. He fell back upon the popular view, re-
jected at least in principle by the earlier scientists, that the
character of celestial nature is altogether different and more
perfect than that of earthly nature. This allowed him to postu-
late new and different principles in his explanation of celestial
processes. For example, he calls upon a very special sort of
matter, the quintessence, which is described as being peculiarly
amenable to form, in order to explain the remarkable regu-
larity of the movements of sun and stars; and he supposes that
in the celestial realm species are normally constituted of but
one individual member. This is really to confess the inap-
plicability of the Aristotelian science to astronomical phe-
nomena. Finally, the process of development becomes, in all
of its physical realizations, only a movement of things in space,
to or from their “proper” places in the cosmos. All motion is
said to derive ultimately from the original circular motion
which we perceive in the “sphere” of fixed stars. This motion
is caused by God, who by his transcendent yet immobile Be-
ing outside of the sphere stimulates its rotation. Circular motion
is said to be most perfect because it is most like immobility,
and does not involve linear displacement. This perfect motion
is transferred with increasing irregularity and imperfection
to interior spheres, the innermost of which is that of the
moon’s orbit. Aristotle thinks of the heavenly bodies as the
visible conjunctions of these otherwise invisible “crystalline
spheres.” More than one sphere was usually required to explain
the motion of a heavenly body. All in all, fifty-five spheres
were called upon to explain the lunar, solar, planetary, and
sidereal motions; and Aristotle spoke of the spheres as divinities,
so that they constituted a pantheon of fifty-five gods.

Below the moon the circular celestial motion is broken up

THE SCIENCE OF ARISTOTLE

I2I

Further, not only must there 'be as many sorts of matter as
there are forms, but there must also be, one would conclude, a
most basic or rudimentary matter out of which develop the
most general forms. Nor does Aristotle escape the tran-
scendentalism for which he so emphatically indicts Plato. Not
only are his eternal specific forms really transcendent, inas-
much as one and the same specific form stimulates the develop-
ment of a given species not only here and now, but always and
everywhere throughout space and eternity; but all the motion
of nature is finally attributed by Aristotle to the stimulating
and effective presence of a God who is outside of the universe
and no part of it. One might continue this indictment for many
pages. One might show how Aristotle’s science, steadily dis-
placing better science, finally resulted in intellectual stagnation
and a scientific coma which lasted until the pioneers of modem
science returned to Plato for their method and inspiration, and
so overcame the sterilities of Aristotelian thought. One might
also point to the long struggle of modern scientists against an
ever resurgent vitalism, vitalism being nothing else than a re-
turn to Aristotle’s ascription of causal power to specific
forms.

Yet after all this is said and done, we shall have to return
to do justice to Aristotle, for three reasons. In the first place,
there are indeed natural species, they do exist, and we cannot
study nature without full recognition of them. Physical science
does not really, as it may seem to do, rest its whole theory
upon mathematical axioms. It, too, needs concepts of natural
types, which are really species although they are not so called.
It requires its electrons, its atoms, its chemical elements, its
organized and specific kinds of energy. Secondly, the study of
organic species has led to the discernment of an evolution of
species; and the hypothesis of evolution, since it cannot be
confined to organic nature on this earth, must ultimately give
to all of our science a new evolutionary and organic character.
And thirdly, if Aristotle introduced confusion into the mag-

THE SOENCE OF ARISTOTLE 1 2}

but not the end and purpose of life. This apparent contradic-
tion too we must resolve.

Notes for Further Reading

The best and most scholarly rendering of Aristotle’s works in
English is the Oxford Translation, recently completed. The Meta-
physica (Vol. VIII) and the logical treatises (Vol. I) present his
basic philosophy. Volume IX comprises his ethical, Volume X his
political treatises. The De Anima (in Vol. Ill) is epistemologically
important. The De Poetica, aesthetic criticism dealing with tragedy,
will be found in Volume XI.

There are earlier translations of many of the works. The student
might do better to read first some studies of Aristotle by modem
scholars.

t. The Oxford Translation of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross and J. A.
Smith. London and New York, Oxford University Press,
various dates.

2. Ross, W. D., Aristotle. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons,

1924.

3. Gomperz, Th., Greek Thinkers, trans. G. G. Berry. London,

J. Murray, 1914, Vol. IV,

4. Mure, G. R. G., Aristotle. London and New York, Oxford

University Press, 1932,

5. Jaeger, W. W., Aristotle; Fundamentals of the History of his

Development, trans. R. Robinson. London and New York,
Oxford University Press, 1934.

6. Taylor, A. E., Aristotle. A short summary. New York, Thomas

Nelson and Sons, 1943.

7. Zeller, Ed., Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, trans.

L. R. Palmer. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1931,
Part II, Chap. IV.

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

125

This nomenclature is misleading, not to say erroneous, in that
the earlier period was often more rigorous and puritanical in
its moral ideal. We might say, perhaps, that the later period
pursued philosophy for its emotional inspiration, without
scientific and mord concern for the truthful description of
fact. The source of this shift of interest, in the writer’s opinion,
is to be found in the changed political condition of Greece.
Hellenic Greece was free and self-governing; its moral and
intellectual life found realistic expression in political activities,
and it therefore required a realistic science. But later Greece
was politically subject, first to Macedon and then to Rome;
and it accordingly cultivated a “reason” which elevated the
individual as the citizen of a universal and divine polity, but
which encouraged him to be indifferent to the social and polit-
ical actualities about him. The living cord of liberty which
had tied the intellectual life of Greece to actuality had been
cut; and the Greek intellect increasingly gave itself to a
dream.

Nothing illustrates this movement to unrealism better than
the uncritical homage brought to Socrates in those later cen-
turies. Socrates had in all things tried to be a man, claiming
no more than man might claim, dismissing the wisdom at-
tributed to him as only his awareness of its lack; but the later
centuries made of Socrates a god, attributing to him faculties
beyond the range of common man. Further, Socrates had died
to save the faith of the Greeks in their political institutions,
i.e. in the civic law; but these later centuries made Socrates
the martyr of the law, and the patron saint of a moral idealism
that looked away from human government to a divine justice
in the skies. So, for many centuries, men sought a moral salva-
tion in no way related to government, and became indifferent
or even hostile to law. What else could they do, so long as one
or another imperialistic power deprived them of moral re-
sponsibility and of its exercise in self-government?

The broadest movement through which Socratic and other

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

127

But Cynicism is really a transitional attitude, marking a
shift or expansion of loyalties. If it does not develop into some-
thing more than this antisocial revulsion, it degenerates into
mere boorishness. So Diogenes, we read, lived in a hogshead,
scorning every human amenity not directly provided by na-
ture. That he was honest in his fashion we know from the
boon he asked of Alexander, called “the Great,” who would
have willingly pensioned him. “Just stand,” Diogenes said,
“from between me and the sun.” Said Alexander: “If I were
not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!” A pretty tableau! The
sycophantic reporters hastily jot down the great man’s words,
and rush o£F to telephone their editors!

In Stoicism, what was true in Cynicism was broadened and
elevated into a noble metaphysics, which became perhaps the
best and broadest faith of that pagan world. Stoicism gets its
name from the Stoa or Porch, the place in Athens where Zeno,
a Semitic merchant of Cyprus, first preached this faith around
300 B.C. Throught the writings of Epictetus, a crippled Greek
slave, through the great Roman stylists Gcero and Seneca, and
through the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, who was Emperor
of Rome at Rome’s imperial height. Stoicism came down to
modem rimes. For some six centuries it was the chief faith of
intellectual antiquity.

Stoicism translated the political faith of earlier Greece into
a “moral” faith, making the individual a citizen of the imiverse,
subject only to universal and divine law. In its metaphysics it
looked back of Socrates to the earlier science, although its em-
phasis was Socratic. The human reason, it taught, discovers
the vast economy or divine plan of the world, in which each
individual thing has its proper place and function. Not a
sparrow falls to earth except by divine ordination, they said.
A man’s whole duty is to preserve himself intact from more
proximate stimuli, which mislead and destroy him, and to live
wholly in the light of this rational knowledge of universal
nature; for man’s integrity is his reason, at once theoretical and

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

129

earlier directed Greek philosophy were no longer remembered,
they persisted subconsciously; and they come strangely and
importantly to Ught in the Stoic vocabulary. The universe,
said the Stoic, is the great City of God, a realm of moral in-
dividuals ruled by divine justice. The Stoics were not tran-
scendentalists like Plato. Their City of God did not exist only
in the skies or beyond. It is the actual material universe which
now and everywhere exists, but which only reason discerns.
It is a City without a written code, a divine community need-
ing neither church nor priesthood, and which no earthly ca-
tastrophe can harm. All men are by birth the citizens of this
visible-invisible realm, so replete with light, beauty, law, good-
ness. The eternal and divine constitution of the world is wholly
realized in every part of the world. The sole evil is our failure
to recognize this goodness. Stoicism reacted to the political
failure of antique society with a renewed confession of faith.
The free cities had fallen; but the free City of God, which is
the universe itself, remained undisturbed, and provided a
home for man. Spinoza would later dream this dream again.

This tremendous loyalty, one might argue, excuses every
defect of Stoicism — ^its confused metaphysic, in which nature
is at once natural law and what conforms to natural law; its
bankruptcy of affection, excused by moral casuistry; its facile
catholicity, allegorizing every teaching into its own. Stoicism
first consoled the Greek who had lost his freedom, restoring
his self-respect; then it broadened Roman justice; finally it
prepared the way for universalistic Christianity. It was the
widest channel through which there flowed to posterity the
Greek faith in a justice which is truth. Yet our appreciation of
the nobility and generosity of this Stoic faith, and of its en-
nobling influence upon the later centuries and our consequent
debt to it, should not blind us to its great defect, which was
its moral unrealism. The Stoic taught that the world is even
now perfect, in spite of all apparent evil. The difference be-
tween good and evil, this suggests, is subjective and illusory;

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY I3I

Some of their scholars took advantage of the wide and eclectic
character of Stoic doctrine to develop a very empirical theory
of knowledge. All knowledge, these men taught, comes from
experience, the mind being initially a blank tablet upon which
impressions are left by observed particular things; and memory
and inference then allow the advance from these particular
impressions to the general concepts of a universal science. This
epistemology was revived at the beginning of the modern age
to support the philosophy of empincism\ and it led some of the
Stoics, as it was later to lead Berkeley and Hume, to skeptical
conclusions. To avoid these, they vaguely appealed to “com-
mon sense,” by which they meant a faculty to apprehend
general forms. Here they followed Aristotle. Stoic thinkers
also developed the Aristotelian logic, in particular the doctrine
of the categories, and the important properties of conditional
sentences of the form; If A, then B. The Stoic epistemology
and logic helped the pioneers of modem thought to break
away from the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, and
they have continued to play an important part in later
philosophy.

The great virtue of Stoicism, we said, was its universalistic
humanism. The earlier Greeks were humanistic in their respect
for the human “essence” which dwells in every human in-
dividual; but they tended to identify humanity with the Greek
people, leaving “barbarians” outside the pale. These Hellenistic
Greeks made no such distinction. Semite and Greek, slave and
master, commoner and emperor, halt and whole were equally
citizens of “the blessed City of God,” and children of the God
in whom all things “live and move and have their being.” This
hospitable humanism, however, was facilitated and made futile
by political indifference. They affirmed human equality, but
they did not draw the political implications of this doctrine.
They tolerated every sort of economic and political disfran-
chisement. Nevertheless this merely verbal equalitarianism was
not without some realistic consequence. The slave was finally

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

m

Under the Empire, the city of Rome became increasingly a
court of last appeal for cases not covered by provincial laws.
The Roman jurists used Stoic principles in their creation of a
law of equity, the jus gentiimt or “law of peoples.” This Roman
jurisprudence — ^not to be confused with the old civic law of
Rome — was codified under Justinian in the sixth century a.d.;
and as “Roman law,” never forgotten in the Italian law schools,
it deeply influenced the development throughout Europe of
the concept of justice. Through Cicero and through Roman
law, the Stoic concept of equalitarian and universal citizenship
began its descent to earth, to become after many centuries the
theory of democratic society.

A second Socratic development, existing alongside of
Stoicism through these later centuries of antiquity, was
Epicureanism. Much as Stoicism corrected and enlarged
Cynicism, the Epicureans elaborated the hedonistic doctrine of
Aristippus of Cyrene. {Hedonism is any doctrine which finds
pleasure to be the substance or criterion of goodness.) Aris-
tippus had come to Socrates from Protagoras, and he seems
to have seen in Socrates only a more able sophist, appealing
against convention and law to some purely individual and sub-
jective insight into truth. Whereas the Cynics found this cri-
terion in the individual’s moral sense of self-integrity, Aristip-
pus found it in the immediate conscious apprehension of value,
i.e. in pleasure. Man’s reason, Aristippus implied, is his ability
to calculate, aided by memory and anticipation, the conse-
quences of his conduct; but hi criterion of what is good for
him must be a deeper, personal, and natural instinct, common
to man and the animals. Every creature is endowed with sensi-
tivity to pleasure and pain, which tells it what to pursue and
what to avoid; but man, by means of his reason, is able to
apply this instinctive faculty widely and precisely, by weigh-
ing pleasures and pains and calculating an optimum synthesis.

Hedonism usually has received hard treatment from mo-
ralists, who are apt to find in it only a defense of license. The

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

135

observe, by comparing and contrasting the Cyrenaic and
Cynic doctrines, their common error, which was their isolation
of the individual from his moral context in society. This isola-
tion left their ethics arbitrary and wilful. The Cyrenaic could
equate the good with pleasure, the Cynic could equate it with
aloofness from pleasure. Each of the doctrines confused reality
with one or the other of the two criteria of reality, with im-
mediate experience or with logic,

Epicurus rescued the truth which lay in the Cyrenaic
hedonism by replacing the individual in his social and natural
context. Bom and brought up like Pythagoras in the isle of
Samos off the Ionian coast, Epicurus came to the mainland of
Greece for his education. Samos had earlier escaped the horrors
of the long war; but on his return he found it ruined and
desolate. Epicurus evidently experienced a deep revulsion
against the cultured, educated, but hectic and irresponsible
world which bred these wars. He hated the great world with
its grandiloquent and deadly superstitions — ^its idols religious,
political, scientific. He taught sobriety, and established his
“gardens” in which humble, sane, and loving people could take
refuge from the world, scorning its prizes and its feverish am-
bition. In these Epicurean groves all was plainness, simplicity,
and friendship. Men and women lived as nature intended them
to live, satisfied with normal pleasures, healthy with work,
blessed with human community.

The essential doctrine of Epicurus was that of human free-
dom. There is no just power, he taught, which has authority
over man. The human individual is properly a natural unit, a
self-determined and self-controlled absolute. His whole duty
is to himself, since there is no higher unit of which he is a
part. His virtue is self-preservation and self-discipline; and he is
wholly responsible to himself for his conduct. Virtue, there-
fore, even as Socrates taught, is just sane and intelligent living.
To establish this doctrine Epicurus appropriated the atomis-
tic science, rejecting all other Greek science. His intention

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

137

obviously, of course, atomism fails to account for the existence
of a life cognitive of its ovm conditions. The ascription of
consciousness to atoms or atomic collocations would cause the
collapse of the atomistic view, if this consciousness is allowed to
influence their behavior. The failure of Epicurus to see the
social and metaphysical implications of his individualistic creed
caused the degeneration of Epicureanism. When memory of
the noble hfe of its founder waned, there was left the cult of
refined sensuality which the name “Epicurean” connotes today.
But we may beheve that Epicurus had truer descendants in the
early Christians, whose cult of the community of friends
bound by mutual love revived his central teaching.

A secondary Epicurean doctrine was to have important uses
in later times. The early Epicureans withdrew from the world,
but they still had to adjust themselves to politically organized
society. To guide or justify their dealings with governments
they developed the sophistic view, which held law to be but
convention imposed upon the individual by force, into the
more self-respecting and reasonable theory that government
arises out of a business contract, entered into by individuals
for the performance of certain specific common functions such
as police duty and military protection. The intention of this
contract-theory was to deprive government of all intrinsic
authority, especially religious and moral authority, yet to justify
government as an economic utility. Recovered in the later
Middle Ages and curiously associated with biblical ideas of a
covenant binding God and man, this contract-theory became
an important element of modern political thought, where it
supports the doctrine of government by consent and the in-
sistence upon moral limitadons upon government.

It was chiefly through the Roman poet Lucretius that knowl-
edge of Epicurean doctrine came to later Europe. In his great
Latin epic De Return Natura Lucretius gave to the doctrine
a new and ennobling purpose. The rejection of superstition
becomes a positive adoration of scientific truth, and the provin-

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

139

emphasized especially the mystical elements in the Platonic
teaching. Further, Philo was influenced by the method of in-
terpretation developed by the Stoics, who accepted many re-
ligious creeds as allegorical versions of their more theoretical
faith. Thus Philo believed (as Roger Bacon much later was to
believe) that Plato and Moses offered different versions of one
and the same truth. The hospitable but uncritical attitude of
mind supporting this belief is characteristic of these later cen-
turies of antiquity, when men were seeking a faith which might
unite into cultural homogeneity that motley Mediterranean
world. The deepest cleft in the cultural landscape was the
chasm between Greek and Semitic cultures, as we shall ob-
serve in our discussion of Christianity; and it was this chasm
that Philo wished to bridge.

Similarly characteristic of all of these centuries is the lack
of scientific interest which marked Neoplatonism. The dom-
inating interest is moral and religious, in the unfortunate sense
which divorces morality and religion from science. Philo’s in-
terest was intellectual, since he required a conceptual approach
to truth; but his dominating objective was the moral and re-
ligious salvation of the individual, to which the conceptual
approach must lead. He is no scientist like Plato, who required
reason to “save the appearances,” i.e. to illuminate particular
and observable fact; but he used the largest framework of
Platonic and Aristotelian science as a conceptual ladder, up
which the inquiring mind might ascend in order, from its high-
est rung, to leap off into a mystical communion or mergence
with absolute Being, this ecstatic vision being the sole motive
and reason of the intellectual effort of man.

Argument as to whether Plato was correctly understood by
Philo would be inconclusive, since the difference is essentially
one of emphasis. Plato established a school of science and law,
the Neoplatonists established theology. But more important
than this epistemological difference was the shift in metaphysi-
cal doctrine. Plato was uncompromisingly dualisdc in his dis-

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

I4I

with the lines: “In the beg^ning 'was the Word [Logos'\, and
the Word 'was 'with God, and the Word 'was God . . . And
the Word 'was made -flesh, and d-welt among us (and 'we beheld
Ms glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father),
full of grace and truth” So, of Philo and of John, elder of the
church at Alexandria, was born Christian theology.

Evidently, this Neoplatonic version of Plato persisted in
Alexandrian thought from the beginning of the Christian era;
but it reached its full elaboration only in the third century A.D.,
through Plotinus and Origen, pupils both of one Ammonius
Saccas of Alexandria. Plotinus is usually regarded as the au-
thoritative exponent, his writings being edited and published
by his pupil Porphyry in a work since called the Enneads from
its division into nine books. The work is a beautiful fantasy,
full of light and color and suggestive metaphor, warm with
moral aspiration and religious anticipation. It is certainly not
science, and scarcely philosophy, since its speculation is almost
wholly uncritical, and weaves together with eclectic liberality
half a dozen brilliant strands of earlier Greek speculation. The
method is wholly deductive and nonempirical, moving from
the intuition of ultimate Being downward (whereas empirical
thought moves upward from observed particulars to ever more
general principles); and very much as Hegel later was to
weave into his speculative fantasy the concepts of contempo-
rary science, so Plotinus finds room on his celestial ladder of
form for Ionian, Pythagorean, Stoic, Aristotelian, Eleatic, and
other concepts. From God, the infinite and iaeffable, there
moves nous or reason, the articulate thought of God with its
plurality of forms or ideas. (It is from Neoplatonism that the
word “idea” gets its present meaning. Earlier it had meant
“form” or even “shape,” something objective which might be
known but which was not peculiarly mental in itself.) The
divine ideas are eternal or timeless, they define the five cate-
gories or ways of being, and they generate a cloud of mystical
numbers, of which there is one for each species, and one for

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY 1 43

Christian creed. There were, further, numerous encyclopedias
of Greek thought, and commentaries on earlier Greek thinkers,
written by Neoplatonists between the third and the sixth cen-
turies, and preserved by the church when earlier writings were
lost. Thus it was that philosophy came to be identified with
Neoplatonic mysticism; and although after a millennium
Europe was to enjoy again a firsthand knowledge of classical
Greece, it still read the Greek originals through Neoplatonic
spectacles. Nor has it ever fully emancipated itself from that
influence. To this day philosophy remains either shaped by the
Neoplatonic tradition, or in a revulsion against it so violent that
the Platonic insight is often rejected along with the Neoplatonic
fantasy; and seldom, except amongst a few scholars versed in
Greek, does one find any adequate knowledge and just esti-
mate of Greek science.

The result is that in spite of our professed admiration for
the Greek achievement, we have never done justice to it nor
appropriated its greatest values. We look back to Greek art
with its delicacy and poise, its lyrical poignancy, its sense of
the audacious right word, its Homeric complacency; but we
do not see clearly the Greece that gave us a realistic science
and a realistic ethics, the Greece that nursed Socrates and
Plato and their great predecessors. Plotinus was not Greece,
even Aristotle was no true Greek. That other Greece was
rugged, plain, sober; yet it too was poignant in its moral hunger,
and more audacious than any Greek simile in its demand for a
religion that served justice first and last. There was in the great-
est Greek thinkers an incomparable honesty, a realism that has
never been surpassed; and the honesty of Greece is half of
the great heritage which is the source of all our blessing. Only
in Plato do we know with some familiarity and completeness
the superb mind and spirit, the sublime truthfulness that was
early Greece.

From Greece came theoretical science, the mother of all
science, and one of the two great bulwarks of the modem
world. There is no reason to believe that factories and dynamos

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

HS

3. Fuller, B. A. G., A History of Ancient and Medieval Philos-

ophy. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1938, revised
1945, Chaps, VI, VII.

4. Bevan, E. R., Stoics and Sceptics. London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1913.

5. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Many edi-

tions.

<5. Wenley, R. M., Stoicism and Its Influence. Boston, Longmans,
Green and Company, 1927.

7. Inge, W. R., Plotinus. Boston, Longmans, Green and Com-

pany, 1918.

8. Patrick, M. M., The Greek Sceptics. New York, Columbia

University Press, 1929.

9. Lucretius, De rerum natura, trans. P. Bailey, London and New

York, Oxford University Press, 1904, also translations by
Munro, Leonard, and others.

10. Santayana, G., Three Philosophical Poets. Cambridge, Harvard

University Press, 1910.

11. Taylor, A. E., Epicurus. New York, Dodge Publishing Com-

pany, 1910.

12. Wallace, W., Epicureanism. London, Society for Promotion of

Christian Knowledge, 1880.

n THE AOTECEDENTS OF
MODERN PHILOSOPHY

9 A NEW HEAVEN
AND A NEW EARTH

Is THE INTEIXECTUAI- AND MORAL CONFUSION OF TODAY
the result of our erroneous belief that we can continue
to enjoy the fruits of a religious past without acknowledging
their religious source? Was it religion that gave to this modem
era its great impetus, generated by a millennium of great faith?
It was necessary, in order to allow this faith to reach its full
realization, to emancipate religion from its institutional forms,
its dogmatic creeds, and its closed ecclesiastical organization.
This emancipation required the disestablishment of institutions
which for many had become identified with religion itself. But
might it not be argued that what was emancipated and em-
powered by the Reformation and the Renaissance was just
religious truth itself, in its essential sanity and power? Should
we imagine that a purely secular culture has expressed itself in
the social and scientific achievements of the last four centuries?
It may be that the virtues of tolerance, kindness, justice, and
mercy will not persist in individual and social life if we no
longer remember their historical evolution and their religious
source. It is scarcely to be denied that what there is of culture
or civilization in modem society is of Christian origin; and

149

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

151

and their causal connections. Neither religious indifference nor
religious unbelief should deter the social scientist from im-
partial study and objective estimate of the working of religion
in human liistory. It is a fact that for nearly two thousand
years, religious faith chiefly determined the direction of social
evolution in the western world; and the effort to recover this
history without full acknowledgment of its religious stimula-
tion merely leaves the historian impotent and his narrative
trivial and tedious. Religious beliefs impelled or conditioned all
the moral, political, and economic history of the west. One
cannot set forth the long movement of western man to his
present form of society without continuous reference to Chris-
tian tenets. This does not mean, of course, that the historian
should identify his own faith with that of Christianity. As a
historian, he must remain free from every religious preposses-
sion. But he does not obtain this freedom by ignoring the de-
gree to which religious faith, for better or for worse, has molded
history. His business as a historian is to state what actually
occurred, and to discover what caused what. It is accordingly
his duty to register and estimate the effects of religion upon
political and other history, where religion had such effects.
He may properly abstain from any explicit conclusion regard-
ing the truth or error of the faith which had these effects;
but he will scarcely find it possible to avoid all estimate of
those effects as good, bad, or indifferent. In any case, those
who read his history will draw such conclusions, since the good
or evil fruits of a faith are evidence for or against its truth. A
faith that destroys or weakens society cannot be true; a faith
that strengthens and invigorates society may be true. Historical
impartiality means honest judgment, not abstention from
judgment, with respect to religion. Complete reservation of
judgment is just intellectual cowardice.

By any historical measure, the rise and spread of Christianity
was a social revolution of the first magnitude. The Roman
empire, the greatest and stablest political organization human

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH 1 53

destruction of Judaea was Rome’s final abdication, and the
passage of power from imperial to papal hands.

Roman history is an object lesson in the sources of political
power, and the conditions of its retention. The Jewish people
were set apart from other peoples by a rigid and fierce loyalty
to their religious and national past. For more than three cen-
turies, however, ever since the conquests of Alexander, they
had been directly exposed to foreign influences, including that
of the Greek mystery-religions. Among Grecianized Jews
there appeared a new cult which combined the intensity of
the Jewish faith, focused now upon a Messiah who would
carry Judaea to victory, with the more personal ardor of the
mystery-religions, which offered salvation to the individual
through the mediation of a divine Savior or Christ. The new
faith was Pythagorean, at once individualistic and social. It
taught the redemption of a Christian community, composed of
all those individuals who accepted the atonement of Christ.
After a sharp struggle, this Christian faith was carried by some
of its Jewish proponents to the gentile world. Because the
Jewish people had established important colonies in all of the
larger Mediterranean cities, the propagation of Christianity
proceeded from many centers and was accordingly rapid. With
the destruction of Judaea in a.d. 70 Christianity became defi-
nitely hostile to Rome, this attitude finding its earliest expres-
sion in the Book of the Revelation of John, later included in
the Christian Bible. This writing was dedicated to the seven
churches of Asia Minor, the chief center of early Christianity;
and it foretells the destruction of “Babylon,” meaning Rome,
to make room for “a new heaven and a new earth.”

Very rapidly this Christian cult spread, until it reached the
remote outposts of the far-flung Roman world; and steadily it
gathered into itself what was best in that world. What did it
offer to its faithful, whom it exposed to contempt, ostracism,
persecution, and death? Why did it gain ground in spite of the
opposition of politically organized power? It is evident that

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH 155

law” and to follow instead the admonitions of “the spirit.”
What was this “spirit,” which transcended all law and all the
past?

The spirit, said Foul of Tarsus, who first carried this radical
gospel to the gentile world, is the faith, hope, and love which
transforms a group of random individuals into a living com-
munity, solid and impulsive yet free. Here were three new
“virtues”; and their establishment as such constituted a new
theory of human nature. You must throw off your old nature,
said Paul, and put on a new nature. Was this doctrine less
momentous two thousand years ago than today, when it is
revived in perverted forms? To appropriate the new nature,
concluded Paul, you need only accept the atonement and
example of Jesus Christ, the new man who is also God. Faith
in the godhead of Jesus Christ is the suflScient condition of the
three virtues of faith, hope, and love, which in their turn are
the constitutive properties of the new man and the new so-
ciety. Did Paul merely use the figure of Jesus, as Plato is
sometimes held to have used the figure of Socrates, to express
his own ideas and to advance his own purposes? Or shall we
too say that Jesus Christ was the divine and creative seed out
of which grew a new civilization? This was not the only time
that such claims have been made for a human individual; but
it was perhaps the only time in human history that such claims,
widely allowed, have revolutionized civilization.

It is fairly well agreed among exegetical scholars that the
earliest Christian conceptions, even those presented in the New
Testament, are an inseparable amalgam of historical fact and
imaginative interpretation. In one sense there is nothing new
in the New Testament. No dictum there that has not its
analogue in earlier wisdom, no incident that is not reminiscent
of earlier myth, no concept that is not implicit in some earlier
train of thought! The New Testament could conceivably be
the imaginative creation of a gifted group of audacious seekers
after religious truth. It could be a synthesis of earlier religious

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH 1 57

The Stoics had allowed that man might live and move and
have his being in God; but only Jesus, carrying to its full con-
clusion the Socratic teaching that piety is the love of God,
dared to teach that God might live and move and have his
being in individual man. Perhaps this is blasphemy still. What-
ever it be, it is nevertheless the creed by which Jesus Christ
brought to an end the pagan world, and announced the re-
ligious basis upon which our modem world is established; for
what Jesus revealed is the truth that man is in his own nature
divine, free, and creative, even as is God. How, except on this
awful, audacious, and sobering assumption, should the human
individual exercise moral and intellectual responsibility? Yet
upon this exercise of individual responsibility we have estab-
lished our society and our science. Let the modem thinker make
explicit the religious and metaphysical implications of the fact
of individual responsibility, which is the foundation and presup-
position of modem life!

The first of the Christian virtues, accordingly, is faith in
the divinity of man. Christianity was a humanism which af-
firmed God even in its afiirmation of human rights. It saw in
Jesus, whom it called “Christ,” the protagonist and exemplar
of this faith that man is in his incalculable measure God. It
taught that we shall find God if we will look for Him in the
lineaments of men and women, boys and girls. The kingdom
of heaven is within man, not in the sky.

The second of the Christian virtues was its optimism, its
hope. This optimism is once again our faith in creative man,
relieved of the intolerable burden of past failure. Hope is our
natural orientation upon the future; for to be so oriented is to
recognize, intelligently and explicitly, the instinctive momen-
tum of our flesh and blood, and to affirm, and not obstruct,
our essential nature. We have forgotten, just because Chris-
tianity is still our teacher, how afflicted with nostalgia and
pessimism was all antiquity. Before Christ all goodness was
residue, the golden age was a remote past, the present was a

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH 159

t. ] fgi ggrir:al system, which from the fifth to the fifteenth cen-
txiry was to be the chief agency of government in Europe,
exercising powers coordinate with or superior to those of
secular rulers. Since ecclesiasticism, like feudalism, has been a
stage or tendency in every large social evolution, we need not
suppose that there is any especi^y close bond between ec-
clesiastical form and Christian tenets. What most strikingly
distinguishes Christianity from other faiths, indeed, is its ex-
plosive exodus, after a thousand years of vigorous development,
from the eccelesiastical institution which had so long protected
and directed its growth.

The historian should not, of course, overlook the great
achievements of ecclesiastical Christianity, and the inestimable
service it rendered to the long Middle Ages and through them
to ourselves. When the Roman economy collapsed, and the
peoples of central and northern Europe came tumbling into
what had been the Empire, it was the church that educated this
new Europe, not only in literary arts and in religious embol-
ism, but also in agriculture, building, and every economic
skill. For a thousand years the church educated Europe. It pre-
served and propagated the political genius inherited from im-
perial Rome, providing ministers of state more educated and
humane than their royal masters. For a thousand years it guided
and moderated secular governments. And during this long
period it firmly inculcated the truth, which Europe was not to
Wget until this twentieth century, that there stands above all
kings and govenunents a moral authority which no political
power may exert. Modem society could establish itself only
after the disestablishment of ecclesiastical authority; but die
free modern society which replaced medieval ecclesiasticism
was, even in its libertarian rebellion, the child of that church,
to which we must stiU owe a filial gratitude. Not to bring this
gratitude is to lack spiritual maturity, and to have no claim to
religious and intellectual liberty. Only what honors its origins
lives long on this earth.

But the chief concern of this chapter is the intellectual

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

i6i

men from other individuals on the ground of their rational
faculty. But this emphasis upon human individuality had always
been a sort of joint or hinge in Greek philosophy, because it
could not be derived from the still more basic conception which
saw in individual things only the local and imperfect appear-
ances of eternal and universal Being. Christianity went still
further in its high evaluation of the human individual; and it
did not identify what is eternal in the human individual with
the theorizing intellect. Its conception of nature as a great
drama of temporal creation required the attribution of some
sort of absoluteness to individual being, in that it made indi-
viduals, and not specific or other eternal forms, the directive
agencies of natural occurrence.

But the opposition between the new Christian concept of
nature and the old Greek etemalism, although it was doubtless
vividly felt, could not be easily stated, or immediately grasped
in its tremendous implication; and the new faith had to make
some sort of contact with the long intellectual tradition of
antiquity, which still dominated the intellectual life of that
time. So we find Christianity seeking to adapt its language to
that of traditional Greek philosophy, and even to present its
very different conception in terms of that philosophy. Neo-
platonism, as the form of Greek philosophy most familiar to
educated Christians, provided the vocabulary used to introduce
Christian thought to intellectual society. At the beginning of
the third century there was elaborated, chiefly by Origen, the
pupil of Neoplatonist Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria, the
Cluistian theology which for many centuries would largely
replace, as authoritative Christian creed, the simpler and
mightier faith affirmed in the earlier scriptures. The junction
between Christian faith and Greek philosophy was effected by
means of the doctrine of the Trinity, which interpreted the
relation of Jesus Christ to God and to man in terms of the three
highest forms of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of being. The
supreme Being became God the Father or Jehovah; the Logos

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

163

tual difficulties. It is evident to the reader of his Confessions
that Augustine’s problem was a personal one. A man of excep-
tional intellectual power, he had found no great work to do, no
lasting and cumulative purpose which would give substance
and perhaps immortality to his achievements. The young and
vigorous church offered the vehicle for his talents that he
needed. What he gave to that church would go far, and be
conserved perhaps forever. Just because Augustine was indi-
vidualistic to the point of egoism, it was altogether essential for
him to lose himself in a life greater than his own. In the church,
he tells us, he found the release for his energies and the serenity
of mind he had sought elsewhere in vain; and the egoist of the
Confessions became the immortal author of The City of God.

Looking back to Augustine today, we see in him the proto-
type of modem man. He stands alongside Plato as the second
of the two thinkers who have most forcefully determined our
intellectual evolution; and with each year, as we more clearly
grasp the constitution of this modem age, the figure of Augus-
tine increases in stature. Unlike Plato, who consummated the
thought of Greece, Augustine stands at the beginning of the
intellectual age which is our own. No great systematist, his
greatness lay in his grasp, seldom clear but ultimately effective,
of the new conception of reality which moved in the Christian
faith. Limited though he was by the vocabulary of Greek
philosophy, Augustine was nevertheless able to in^cate a new
sort of apprehension of actuality. He accomplished this by
implication and suggestion. He gave to old concepts new mean-
ings, he bluntly rejected certain hitherto dominant concepts,
and he created some new concepts. In their sum, these changes
successfully communicated the new concept of reality which
engendered them. It is scarcely too much to say that the history
of thought since Augustine, especially the thought of the last
six centuries, has been the straggle between Greek eternalism
and Augustinian creationism; and today we must acknowledge
Augustine the victor in this struggle.

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

165

don of the human, race through the creative agency of Jesus
Christ and the church. Yet he never quite rejected the eter-
nalistic theology of the earlier Fathers, who spoke of the world
as the materialization of the timeless ideas of the Logos or the*
mind of God. However, Augustine’s greatest and best-known
work. The City of God, very definitely advanced a temporal-
istic or historical conception of reality. In this book the biblical
story of the creation, fall, and redemption of man is expanded
into a philosophy of history, which uses the narrative and
prophecy of the Old Testament to portray a long struggle of
earthly empires as the prelude to the advent of the true and
divine government of man in the church. The Roman Empire
is depicted as the latest embodiment of the powers of error and
evil in the world; and Augustine hopefully anticipated, as well
he might early in the fifth century, its final collapse. Augustine
was not the first thinker to make use of history as a vehicle of
philosophical truth; but he was the thinker through whom this
philosophical approach, which earlier ages called “prophecy,”
was chiefly developed and transmitted to later times.

Augustine’s reading of history as a long progress from more
secular to more spiritual government is often dismissed by
modem critics as a flagrant example of fatalistic or teleological
explanation. Whereas science mechanistically explains later
events as effects of earlier events which are their causes, the
teleologist explains earlier events as the necessary antecedents
of certain later events, their goal. Teleology, in short, extends,
the concept of purposive behavior to wider nature, as if vast
namre revealed some purpose of its own. Thus for Augustine
material nature was created to provide a home for the human
spirit, and the long centuries of human error are shown to be
tile working of the will of God, who has deter mi ned man’s sal-
vation. It cannot be denied that Augustine does explain the his-
tory of nature teleologically, as leading up to its divinely in-
tended goal or terminus; but the critic is incautious when he
hastily assumes that such explanation is necessarily unscien-

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH 1 67

Since all science and society are established upon these two
apparently contradictory doctrines, it is for the honest and
courageous thinker to attempt their reconciliation, by showing
how their apparent contradiction can be removed. We do not
further understanding by affirming one of the two doctrines,
while glibly ignoring the other.

The intention of early Christianity was to extol spontaneous
goodness, immediate responsiveness, ready feeling. It advocated
more “life,” i.e. more sensitiveness to the immediate present. It
opposed “the spirit” to “the law,” the claim of the present or
future to the claim of the dead past. This attitude was and is
deeply philosophical — ^however, it is philosophical in a sense
directly opposed to ancient philosophy, which had always
deprecated the present in the interests of the “eternal,” l.e. the
past. Therefore Christianity in its most essential doctrine, that
of the spirit which fulfils and transcends the law, could not be
absorbed into Greek philosophy; and it has always reacted with
and upon Greek philosophy in significant and profitable ways.
One of these ways has been its emphasis upon individual
character. To subordinate the law to the needs of living men
and women is ultimately to make individuals the source and
criterion of law.

This individualism appears both implicitly and explicitly in
Augustine’s writings. It is imphcit in his autobiographical
Confessions. These, with their unrelieved and somewhat egoistic
concern for the salvation of their author, are the prototype of
the psychological literature widely current in our own day.
No other work of antiquity is so modem in quality as this.
Augustine shows here little awareness of the society around
him, the well-being of which is the real goal of all his moral
effort. He is concerned only with his own soul and its redemp-
tion; yet the solution of his private problem is his entrance into
the Christian community, in which his individual life is identi-
fied, by an act of free wiU, with the larger life of the church.

More explicit is the individualism of Augustine’s theory of

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

169

and love of truth, Augustine is able to argue the reality of God
who created the world and implanted in us our love of truth.
Descartes, early in the seventeenth century, revived this Augus-
tinian doctrine, which has given to all modem thought its dis-
tinctive subjective character.

Augustine was the first great and original thinker, if we
except Lucretius, who used the Latin language. The use of
Latin affected western thought, since Greek concepts undergo
some modification even in their nearest Latin rendering; but
more important is the great influence which this use of Latin
gave to Augustine in the west, where Latin was to be the
language of scholarship for more than a thousand years It is
difficult to overemphasize this Augustinian influence in the
development of western thought and life. The earlier Church
Fathers had tied Christian theology to the rationalistic Neopla-
tonic philosophy. Augustine did not repudiate the earlier
theology; yet he liberated himself from it, and liberated finally
the thought of the west, by appending to it the individualistic,
empirical, and creationistic doctrines we have noted.

The greamess of Augustine, and the enormous part he played
in the shaping of western thought, are beconoing recognized
today. The positive and revolutionary character of his thought
was not immediately apparent, for he usually said less than his
doctrines implied. He retained the older theology alongside his
own radical tenets; and he never, because he could not have
done so, adds up his radical innovations and emphases to pro-
duce a total picture. But when, fifteen hundred years later, we
try to sum up the modifications introduced by this remarkable
thinker, in order to grasp the integral concept of reality which
inspired and emboldened his thought, we are startled to find
how different from that of any earlier thinker, and how like
our own, was Augustine’s vision of the world. This man, we
conclude, was the first “modern”! And then we discover how,
in historical fact, the thought of Augustine stimulated the late
medieval movements which ushered in modern science and

10 THE LONG MIDDLE AGE

W HAVE NOW OBSERVED THE DEVELOPMENT OF

Greek science, in its effort to establish a universal
knowledge grounding a just civic constitution; we have seen
how realistic thought, following Aristotle, became idealistic,
natural science becoming a moral system and the ideal constitu-
tion becoming a city of the sky; and we have finally noted how
Christianity cut across this Greek movement at an oblique
angle, retaining and even accentuating its moral emphasis, yet
requiring a realistic actualization of the moral ideal in a re-
deemed human community. The final result of the long devel-
opment was the establishment of a universal church, armed
with a moral or spiritual authority which claimed precedence
over secular power. To Caesar should be rendered what is
Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. To God, announced the
Christian prayer, belongs the kingdom, the power, and the
glory forever! Just what was assigned to Caesar?

For a thousand years the ecclesiastical organization centered
at Rome retained this authority, and western Europe developed
under a dual government of church and state. The complex
relationship between the ecclesiastical and secular governments
is the central theme of the long medieval history; and this rela-
tionship continues to play a much larger part than is usually

171

the long middle age lyj

- stagnancy, and not to be revived except by a return to the social
and political poverty out of which they arose.

Feudalism appears at an early stage of many a developing
civilization. When the western Roman Empire, separated now
from the eastern Empire centered at Constantinople, fell into
chaos as the result of turbulent migrations from northern and
central Europe, a measure of order and stability was reached
where local chieftains could establish their power by rigid
military rule. As chaos lessened and migrating peoples turned
to settlement and agriculture, military discipline became a sys-
tem of land tenure, the ownership of land carr5dng military
responsibilities. This was feudalism, a loose system of personal
government which could and did develop into the great feudal
hierarchy of emperor, kings, princes, lords, knights, squires,
yeomen, and serfs. Normally, i.e. with peace and the develop-
ment of artisanship and commerce, feudal government is
steadily transformed into something else, even where the feudal
forms and titles are retained. It should be observed that feudal
government, although personal, is not absolute government.
Each level of the feudal hierarchy has its rights as well as its
responsibilities, and it is the duty of the individual to maintain
these feudal rights, established by use or common law, against
aggression from above and invasion from below. When war
and the constant threat of war gave way to more peaceful pros-
pects, the feudal system became artificial and self-destructive,
corrupting into “chivalry” and bloody vendettas between
noble families. The Wars of the Roses illustrate this dying
feudalism in England. When the rival factions had sufficiently
destroyed each other, Henry Tudor, as Henry VII, backed by
the urban nonfeudal population, was able to establish monarchy
in place of feudalism. The English people tolerated, indeed
heartily supported, this Tudor dynasty in its usurpation of
absolute power, until feudal claims had become obsolete; yet
when the people rebelled against royal absolutism, they justified

the long middle age

175

pire with its own government, code of law, and courts. In many
respects this great ecclesiastical state which crossed ?ill feudd
boundaries offered to the individual a life more free, more
inspired, and more humane than might be found elsewhere. It
was a question, indeed, whether this clerical government might
not become the sole government of Europe. Yet the church
itself, since its clergy was celibate, could not be identified with
European society; and the great expansion of its economic and
political responsibilities increasingly affected the character of
the church, secularizing it and prejudicing its religious work.
Thus the Middle Ages produced a well-nigh insoluble problem,
a problem that was to convulse Europe in century-long wars
and that has never ceased to disturb continental Europe. The
problem was to keep religion authoritative while divesting it of
secular powers.

Having brought this problem to an acute stage, the Middle
Ages came to an end, the feudal and ecclesiastical systems
crashing down together. Strong kings with the support of their
commoners usurped the feudal power; the great ecclesiastical
estates were confiscated and distributed, the clerical orders were
disbanded. But the deeper problem was not solved by these
strong-arm measures. Where was now the moral authority, the
rule of the spirit, which ever since Emperor Constantine’s
recognition of the church had in theory limited tyrannous
government? I am that spirit, said the absolute king; I am the
head and fount of the church. And where was the common law,
the inborn rights and powers that inhered in some measure in
every feudal class? I am the law, said the king; all powers derive
from me. So the fall of feudalism and ecclesiasticism, precip-
itated by strong Idngs who could sincerely and reasonably
appeal to the crying need for radical political and economic
reform, was followed by a period of revolutions, needed to
establish once again the authority of moral man over established
power. And we observe that such revolution was successful,
permanent in its political establishments, and beneficial in its

the long middle age 177

early Christianity destroyed or allowed to rot the great libraries
of later antiquity. That early Christianity prohibited the pagan
literature is unquestionable; but since this literature was never
lost in eastern Europe, where the Greek language remained in
common use, it seems to have been the use of Latin rather than
any deliberate prohibition that cut western Christianity off
from Greek science and scholarship. However this may be,
there is no doubt that the small library of writings which was
retained by the western church had all the more influence in
its determination of a distinctively occidental way of thought.
This library contained the works of Augustine and other Latin
Fathers in their Latin originals, and also portions of the writings
of Cicero, Seneca, and Lucretius. In translation from the Greek
there was of course the New Testament, and also portions of
the Greek Fathers, a fragment fror the Timaeus of Plato, parts
of Aristotle’s logic with a commentary by the Neoplatonist
Porphyry, the Consolations of Boethius, and some philosophical
commentaries. For some centuries the mind of western Europe
was whetted on these few texts, which gave to western culture
a vocabulary, a style of speech, and an orientation of thought
which are still discernible. Just as a boy today might be better
educated by the rigorous study of a few well-selected texts than
by a large amount of casual reading, so it is possible that west-
ern Europe was blessed and not cursed by its isolation from the
vast literature of later antiquity. One effect of this isolation
was that the great systems of Greek science and metaphysics
became known only when western society had developed itself
far enough, in exercises logical and theological, to be able to
meet Greek thought with a measure of independence. So there
could arise and maintain itself that critical attitude of mind
which is the chief mark of the western intellect. Our concern
therefore with these Middle Ages will be the movement to this
critical attitude of mind, as this movement was stimulated by
increasing contact with the original thought of Greece.

The first contact of this kind was a strange one, occurring

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE 179

translation of the Greek “idea” or “form.” Porph5n:y in his
commentary upon Aristotle’s logic had asked: Are universals
prior to the things which instance them, or in things, or after
things, Le. in our minds? Roscellinus answered flatly: in our
minds, and only there, because all actual things are individual
beings, and there is no being that is not ineradicably individual.
This is the doctrine of nommalism, which affirms that universal
or general terms are but names. We can give the same name,
e.g. “dog,” to any member of a class of similar things; but these
things are individual beings, and we may not suppose that there
is some nonindividual sort of being, i.e. universal Being, corre-
^onding to universal terms.

This doctrine is at first sight plausible, and we shall see that
it withstands criticism; yet the nominalist must explain why,
if general terms refer to nothing real in nature, they are indis-
pensable to all study and explanation of nature. Does theoretical
science, which defoes certain very general strucrores such as
physical structure, chemical structure, etc., describe not a struc-
ture in nature but only a structure in our minds? The nominal-
ist will always raise an adversary in the realist, who insists that
universal terms refer to realities, not to names merely. So
Anselm of Canterbury, the older and much respected con-
temporary of Roscellinus, rose to the latter’s challenge with an
able defense of realistic metaphysics. To deny the reality of
universal Being, Anselm argued, is to forego all rational knowl-
edge. To know the tmiversal forms which reside in individual
things is to understand things. It is to know why things behave
as they do, and to understand their place and function in the
universal system of the cosmos. Individual things are therefore
intelligible and “real” only in virtue of these universal forms
which they manifest, which forms therefore are most real. It
is through these universal forms, moreover, that we are led to
religious truth, since to pursue these causal and formal relations
is to be led finally to the supreme Form and First Cause of
everything, which is God. Thus to affirm universals is to afiirm

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE

l8l

modern period, in that it confined itself to book knowledge
and traditional learning, and did not advance to conclusions
based upon new evidence reached by original observation and
experiment. Yet we should do justice to the scholastic method,
even in recognizing its limitations. It was not subservient, since
it required the scholar to weigh his textual authorities and to
depend upon his own judgment. It proposed to advance be-
yond earlier opinion, by finding in the contradictions of past
authorities an injunction to independent thought. Scholastic
method at its best, for example in Abelard or Aquinas, was in
truth a preparation for modem critical science; and without
this first stage there could not have developed the second stage.
In this first stage, the scholar aimed to master past thought,
accepting its conclusions as evidence yet not as finality, in
order to reach a higher and truer illumination. Such scholarly
anal)^, comprehending and weighing all existing knowledge,
must always form an important part of research. In the second
stage of th^ development, properly called “science,” the thinker
turns to observable fact and experiment for new evidence, de-
rived not from books and past authorities but from nature
itself. However, a true science will always comprehend the
insight of the past; and the scholastic method was a proper and
necessary prelude of the independent natural science of today.

Abelard’s tragic history is a profound commentary on medie-
val society. The most brilliant young scholar of his century,
he could anticipate a clerical career leading to the highest and
most responsible offices in Europe. This career required
celibacy; and Abelard fell in love with his lovely and gifted
pupil Heloise. Heloise, vowing that she would rather be
Abelard’s mistress than the spouse of an emperor, refused to
allow her lover to sacrifice his career by regularizing their
union; and she retired with their daughter to a convent, where
she wrote those letters which still make this story the most
authentic and moving of the medieval romances. Abelard, emas-
culated by the indignant family of Heloise and publicly dis-

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE 1 83

read Aristode subserviendy, as if the human reason had uttered
in Aristode its whole thought and must ever after only think
that thought again. Yet it was nevertheless Aristode who taught
Europe to see in nature a great array of natural domains, each
accessible to the natural light of reason and each delivering its
appropriate science. And the rebellion against Aristode, neces-
sary and fruitful as it was, was never able to confine the broad-
ened mind of Europe to a single narrow discipline.

It would take too long, nor does it belong within the pur-
pose of this book, to try to portray the great system of
Aquinas, which erects upon the flat architectonic of Aris-
totelian science the towering spire of Christian theology.
Thoimsm, as we call this system today, became very quickly
the unofficial, and much later the official, philosophical code
of the Roman Church, which it remains to this day, when it
is experiencing a vigorous revival in certain Catholic centers.
The largest movement of modem science and philosophy, how-
ever, whatever may be its final or future constitution, has pro-
ceeded independendy of scholastic thought, and to a consid-
erable degree in hostile opposition to it. We will note, there-
fore, only some of the largest and most generally influential
doctrines of the scholastic philosophy.

First, Aquinas defined the boundaries and legitimate func-
tions of faith and reason, i.e. of revealed religion and theoreti-
cal science. Faith, he taught, reveals the goal toward which
reason must strive, but which reason cannot of itself attain.
Because the world is the creation of God’s free and omnipotent
will, it is a contingent world, i.e. it is a world the character of
which cannot be deduced from any purely rational premises.
This principle of the contingency of nature, which Aquinas
derives from Christian doctrine, is truly the principle which
calls for an empirical science, reaching its conclusions from
observed fact, to replace the rationalistic science of antiquity.
Aquinas concludes further that scientific knowledge must be
less than complete, because the world, as the creature of an

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE 1 85

ml law is the infinite and unknowable will of God. Natural law
is the part of eternal law accessible to the human reason through
its scientific study of nature. Divine law is the part revealed to
man in transmitted religion. Human law is the realization of
natural and divine law in legal codes, e.g. Roman and canon
law, and in the jus gentium, the unwritten law regulating
relations among nations or peoples. By means of this elastic or
compendious doctrine Aquinas established the concept of a
divine or natural law, supporting and realized in the actualities
of government. This was a return to the Greek and Platonic
ideal of government by law, which Aquinas thus helped to
make a commonplace of political thought. Aquinas followed
Aristotle in his conception of the state as a natural outgrowth
of human sociability. He favored monarchy, as did in the
thirteenth century most forward-looking thinkers, weary of
the failures of feudal government. Also forward-looking was
Aquinas’ doctrine that the state, re^onsible at once to God
and to the people, must secure the economic welfare of its
citizens.

We should see in the scholastic system of Aquinas one of the
great achievements and emancipating influences of medieval
thought. It established the authority of a free natural science,
proceeding from observable fact by way of rational analysis;
it secured the authority of secular government, yet subjected
this power to limitations both moral or spiritual and popular
or legal; and it showed the dependency of both science and
society upon moral foundations. The later centuries owe much
to this great and liberal thinker, who combined breadth of
classical scholarship with mtensity of religious faith. Yet the
work of Aquinas had very definite limitations, which leave it
an achievement peculiarly medieval and unmodern.

Its most obvious limitation was its fidelity to the logic and
science of Aristotle, whose method, as we noted earlier, consti-
tuted only one movement of Greek science, and not the most
fruitful approach to fact. In the hands of men of less genius

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE

187

lay membership of the church testified to the desire of the peo-
ple of Europe to appropriate to themselves the religious insight
which earlier had been the prerogative of the ecclesiastical
priesthood. Very soon, it is true, the Franciscans organized
themselves into a clerical order similar to that of the Domini-
cans; and only two centuries later did the Protestant Reforma-
tion erase in northern Europe the line between the priesthood
and society at large. But the Franciscan movement foreshad-
owed, in its unpretentious and simple practice of religion and
in its philosophical and theological leanings, the modem society
that issued from the Middle Ages. Franciscan theology looked
chiefly to Augustine, and gave to the creative thought of that
great mind an influence greater than it had enjoyed; and the
memory of St. Francis was preserved in a naturalistic mysticism
which made the visible world an immediate experience of God.
Thus BuoTiaventara, a contemporary of Aquinas and the first
Franciscan philosopher, tells us to see in our immediate experi-
ence the small analogue of the universal and divine process by
which God creates the world. Earlier theology had looked to
the authority of tradition, derived from revelation in the past;
but St. Francis, in the power of his direct experience of God,
taught his followers a new way of truth, a new confidence in
their powers of immediate apprehension, and a new concep-
tion of that ultimate Being which is at every time accessible to
the earnest and illuminated mind. Following the lives and
words of these thirteenth-century Franciscans, we feel that we
are attending the birth of a new mentality, one that is modem,
democratic, and empirical; and we are not surprised to dis-
cover in the writings of certain Franciscan scholars the initial
steps of the science and philosophy of today. This modem way
of thought we call “empirical” or “empiricistic,” because it
emphasizes experience rather than reason, even at the expense
of reason. By “experience” is meant the immediate perception
of sensible fact, and by “reason,” in this context, is meant the
conceptual formulations and explicit theories of the intellect.

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE

189

whole business of science, he said, is to know clearly the small
set of primary and universal principles basic to mathematical
science, and to apply these principles, directly or through ex-
perimentation, to the observable phenomena of nature, which
wiU everywhere reveal their perfect fidelity to mathematical
pattern. He mercilessly castigated the loose and haphazard
“learning” of his time, and was especially critical of Aristotelian
science. He professed adherence to the established religion; but
he called upon the church to cast out its unscientific philosophy,
and to encourage this mathematical and experimental research.
It is the virtue of this true science, he said, to give man power
over nature; and this great instrument, if the church neglects
its use, will fall into the hands of the enemies of the church
and be used to destroy the church. The church did not respond
to these vehement exhortations. It imprisoned the hot old
genius during the last decade or more of his long life, none
other than the saintly and gifted Buenaventura signing the
order for his incarceration; and we shall never know what the
church might have become if instead of repudiating its great
son it had united the development of modern science with its
own religious aspiration, and not required posterity to choose
between scientific truth and religious orthodoxy.

The complete teaching of Roger Bacon is a matter of some
obscurity. Only fragments of his writings are preserved, some
of his works being inscribed in a curious cipher not yet de-
coded. But it is established that he was a great initiator of ex-
perimental theoretical science, looking to experience and at-
tempting an independent analysis of observed fact. He seems to
have united the mathematical faith of Plato with the new Fran-
ciscan and Augustinian insight into the potentialities of our
immediate experience of nature. Just how Bacon united reason
and experience we do not know; but that he did bring them to-
gether into a most fruitful union is shown by the long develop-
ment of science and philosophy, reaching down to ourselves,
which issued from him. In Bacon first was the great impetus of

THE LONG MIDDLE AGE

I9I

are, Occam taught, two criteria or tests of knowledge, not
merely one. The first is the rational criterion — our conclusions
must be deducible from basic self-evident principles, such as
the axioms of mathematics. The second is the empirical cri-
terion, which requires that general knowledge must confirm
itself in all observable particular fact. We saw how Eriugena
in the ninth century fost set forth this double requirement,
which Occam in the fourteenth century restates in clearer
language. It is this double requirement that distinguishes mod-
em empirical science from all earlier science, which was ration-
alistic because it emphasized the first requirement to the neglect
of the second. We must believe that Occam publicized in this
way the scientific theory and practice proposed by his prede-
cessor Roger Bacon. This means that modem science was in-
augurated in its essential principles in the thirteenth century.

Equally important for the rise of empirical science was a
second doctrine promulgated by Occam. The objective of
science, he taught, is the discovery of causal relations among
particular things. Medieval learning, following Aristotle, had
found the causes of individual things in their specific forms,
i.e. in the conformity of particular fact to general forms, which
constitute in this view the general causes of particular events.
(So today we might explain the motion of the moon as a par-
ticular instance of the general “law” of gravitation.) In a slash-
ing attack upon the scholastic science, Occam rejected this
sort of explanation as merely verbal. To classify a thing as a
member of a certain species, or to classify an event as a certain
sort of event or as the instance of some law, does not inform
us concerning the cause of that thing or that event. The causes
of a particular thing or event lie in other particular things or
events. (Thus although we say that the motion of the moon
is an instance of the law of gravitation, we mean that the
moon is determined in its motion by the action upon it of
particular forces exerted by particular bodies, chiefly the earth
and sun.) There are in every occurrence or change, it follows,

raE LONG MIDDLE AGE

193

must be something in individual things which corresponds to
the general formula and is truly indicated by it. But we forgive
Occam’s error because of the value and truth of his positive
account of science. Occam’s strictures upon scientific method
became a deathblow to all forms of scholastic, merely ration-
alistic science, and the foundation of an empirical science
which derives its hypotheses from experienced fact and con-
firms them again therein.

We have given considerably more space and importance to
these medieval Franciscans than is usually accorded to them.
Our purpose is to correct the stiU prevalent superstition
that modern science suddenly appeared, without notable
antecedents, at the time of the Renaissance. We must insist that
modem science in its distinctive character was initiated by these
clerics working in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
What was the deep and obscure feeling which motivated these
men, whose thought was to transform the human intellecj:,‘and
through this the human world.? What compelled them to rebel
against all the scientific and philosophic^ authority of the
past? What insight gave them their moral courage and their
scientific power? In their own day, remember, they could ap-
peal to no great body of empirical achievement such as exists
today. For their scientific experiments they were suspect in the
public eye, as devotees of the “black art” of magic. For their
philosophical teachings they were persecuted, ostracized,
despised by their learned fellows. Bacon languished in prison;
and the name of Duns Scotus became the scornful epithet
dunce,” hurled by orthodox scholars at these subversive non-
conformists. Did these followers of St. Francis see a new world
because they strained toward a new society, a society emanci-
pated from the political bonds of feudalism and the intellectual
bonds of medieval ecclesiasticism? Was their intellectual rebel-
lion the van of a social and religious rebellion? The early
Greeks established Greek science because they insisted that
nature, like Greek society, must manifest a legal constitution,

IHE LONG MIDDLE AGE X95

8. The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages. New York,

The Macmillan Company, 1923.

9. Crump, C. G,, and Jacob, E. F., The Legacy of the Middle

Ages, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1943, Oxford Series.

10. Coker, F. W., Readings in folitical Philosophy. New York,
The Macmillan Company, 1938, Chap. V.

II* Mcllwain, C. H., The Growth of Political Thought in the
West. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1932, Chap, V.

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIETY

197

democratic government must have consequences in the do-
mestic, educational, recreational, social, and religious activities
of a people.

While it is proper to describe modern society in terms of
these distinctive political and social institutions, the word
“modem” indicates a direction of social evolution rather than
any set of fixed institutions. The American colonies were evi-
dently moving toward democratic government; yet they still
retained much that was undemocratic and old-world. Democ-
racy is a direction of thought and life. It is a movement that
began some centuries ago, and that will indefinitely continue
its transformation of social institutions and human character.

Between this modem movement to democracy and medieval
feudalism occurred a transitional period marked by monarchi-
cal government. The rapid breakdown of feudal institutions
under the stress of new conditions made a temporary dictator-
ship inevitable. Monarchies were established wherever some
able and ambitious feudal lord, supported by a public seeking
escape from feudal forms, was able to enlarge his feudal ofiice
into that of sovereign. In this way developed nations, or socie-
ties centrally organized around the monarch, in whose person
was centered and symbolized the national unity. England best
illustrates this transition from feudalism to a more modem form
of government. Henry VII ended the destractive wars be-
tween feudal factions, established royal power, carried through
legal and economic reforms, prevented the recovery of the
feudal nobility, and encouraged the development of national
industry and commerce. He and his Tudor successors exercised
virtually absolute powers, which they owed to their able and
firm government and to their encouragement of commercial
and urban interests which had found no place in the feudal
system. The English parliament, a representative but still feudal
institution, could not prevent this monarchical assumption of
power; but it kept alive the memory of feudal rights, and never
acquiesced in the theory and practice of absolute monarchy.

the birth of modern SOCIETy 199

movement to democratic government, was that of religious
freedom. The Stuarts had long resisted the Presbyterian Scotch,
who wished to retain the management of the church in their
own hands. Finally, when the Presbyterians threw out his ap-
pointees, Charles I summoned the J^glish parliament to vote
him monies to suppress these rebels. Parliament, itself mainly
Presbyterian, voted instead to support the rebels, and declared
war against Charles. The parliamentary armies were largely
composed of Puritan dissenters officered by Presbyterian gen-
try; and when parliament moved to make terms with Charles,
these soldiers took power into their own hands, set up a tribunal
which tried and executed Charles on the charge of high treason,
and established the Commonwealth, a form of government
which was neither monarchical nor parliamentary.

This English revolution established the political principle
of the supremacy of law. Charles I, who had claimed to be
above the law, was executed for breaking the law. It is often
forgotten that this revolution also proceeded to the establish-
ment of a republican form of government, enabling a people
to rule itself directly through its moral and religious leaders.
Since the Stuarts had alienated almost every section of society,
the revolution against them was variously motivated, economi-
cally, socially, and politically, as well as religiously; but it
is impossible to mistake the dominantly religious origin, motiva-
tion, and outcome of this first of all the revolutions that have
modernized society. The British people, having rejected the
authority of Rome and subjected themselves to a Puritan
discipline of their own making, proposed now to preserve this
religious and moral power from royal interference, and to make
of it the ruler of their land. It was a Puritan revolution, issuing
in a Puritan government.

To be convinced of the moral and religious motivation which
impelled the movement to modem democratic society, one
must observe that only where the movement of Puritan reform
was able to advance with relative freedom did the movement

the birth of modern society

201

much. There, as earlier in Tudor England, the established
clergy sided with the national monarch in his struggle against
papal authority; but they later required, as recompense for this
support, his persecution of the reformed religion. Here, too,
the consequence of the Reformation was to identify an estab-
lished church with a royalist and absolutistic form of govern-
ment; and the struggle for political liberty became anticlerical,
and in its theory atheistic. The French revolution was accord-
ingly long delayed and unusually bloody and bitter, and the
republic which it established was never stable. This has been the
history of every libertarian movement which was not sup-
ported and strengthened by free religion.

The seventeenth century was remarkable for its production
of political pamphlets. This literature was an outgrowth of the
religious and theological literature, also tremendous in bulk,
which had followed the Reformation. After the failure of the
Commonwealth with its Puritan objectives the liberal thinker
turned increasingly to philosophical and moral principles in his
efFort to substantiate his political purposes. The political theory
developed during the later seventeenth century was the chief
instruction of those who gave to modem society its political
constitution; and among these political theorists one name, that
of John Locke, outranks all the rest.

The purpose of the creators of modem government was to
enfranchise and empower the individual conscience, by making
effective in every individual his religious responsibility for all
of his fellows. This responsibility, it was now clear, could be
fully exercised only through a control of government. Yet
how could the freedom and power of the individual be recon-
ciled with the fact of government? How may law, with its
restriction upon individual behavior, leave unimpaired the
moral power of the individual?

During the Middle Ages this crucial problem had been par-
tially solved by a division of the governing power among feudal
ranks and between church and state. The degree and kind of

IHE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIETY

203

and solidly organized people, defined in terms of their posses-
sion of territory and their political unity. The nonmoral char-
acter of this “realistic” political theory is starkly apparent in
its two best-known exponents, Machiavelli and Hobbes.

Machiavelli, a Florentine who wrote early in the sixteenth
century, was inspired by his too idealistic conception of
ancient Rome. He dreamed of a strong and united Italy, and
looked enviously toward France and England, which had al-
ready achieved national solidarity. Several causes had kept
Italy divided into warring principalities, the chief cause,
Machiavelli believed, being the concern of the Papacy to keep
intact its papal domains. What Italy needed, he concluded, was
a prince whose personal ambition would override all religious
and other scruples, and whose skill in intrigue and war would
enable him to unify Italy by sheer force. In his famous book
The Trince he presented a manual of advice and instruction for
such a tyrant. Machiavelli was a genuine patriot, weary of the
political turmoil and the moral corruption which he saw about
him; and at heart he was a liberal, one who would revive the
virtues of stout and honest citizenship as they had supposedly
existed in republican Rome. He assumed, however, that th^
patriotic purpose justified, every intrigue, deceit, and violence.
He calls for a ruler whose power over his people is absolute,
and who will use education and religion to keep his subjects
devoted to himself and to his political ambition. Machiavelli’s
book, full of sincere, shrewd, yet cynical perception of the
baser motives playing into political life, has been for four cen-
turies the guide of unscrupulous statesmen, until its essential
doctrine, teaching that the state as the whole source of law and
right transcends moral limitations, became the creed of a new
tyranny in Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler.

More than a century after Machiavelli, this doctrine of politi-
cal absolutism was given systematic expression by Thomas
Hobbes in his book Tevtathan, still regarded as a classical work
because of its bold effort to deal realistically with the forces

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIETr

205!

equally manifest one and the same law which is thai,,^ uni-
versal and divine justice, Hobbes defines the individual aii^ the
state in such a way as to make their reconciliation impossible.
The individual is defined as in his inherent and constitutive
nature lawless, wholly belligerent, and nonmoral; and the
state thus becomes something superhuman, imposed upon the
individual by an external and alien power. Hobbes did not hesi-
tate to call the monarch “a mortal god.” His theory is close
to that of the Greek sophists, who held all law to be nothing
but artificial convention, without real authority and imposed
by force or deceit. The concepts of natural rights and natural
law have never wholly recovered from this Hobhesian in-
terpretation.

Hobbes’ intention, of course, was to justify political author-
ity as the true law, that of reason and morality; but he defined
the individual in such a way as to allow no relationship be-
tween individual freedom and rational or moral law. Law must
be imposed upon the individual from without, by an external
force. To jus^y and explain this imposition, Hobbes gave to
another curnent idea, that which held government to arise out
of a contract, a new and strange interpretation. The Epi-
cureans, it may be recalled, had used this contract theory to
deny moral authority to the slate. The state is in the position
of a contractor, they held, commissioned by society to perform
certain specified and limited functions. Hobbes, however,
describes a strange contract according to which the individuals
composing society irrevocably renounce aU their inherent
powers, and place these without residue in the hands of the
sovereign, who undertakes in return to make the good of the
state identical with his own good, to maintain law and order,
and to delegate to his subjects only such powers as will not
disturb the common peace. This implies that all real individual
rights, as distinguished from those “natural rights” which ac-
cording to Hobbes are just lawless powers, derive from the
state or the monarch; and this is the constitutive principle of

THE BERTH OF MODERN SOaETY

207

was generally conceived to establish the principle of self-
government. In the writings of its spokesman Locke, indeed,
this revolution produced the classical exposition of democratic
theory.

Jolm Locke, son of a small landholder whose services in the
first revolution had depleted his fortune, qualified himself as a
physician, but remained at Oxford pursuing scientific and
scholarly research until his close relations with certain Whig
noblemen caused the Stuart monarch to demand his dismissal.
Locke went to Holland, where with other conspirators he
prepared the way for the Whig revolution. Following his
return to England with the new monarch, he published in rapid
succession the political and philosophical works which he had
prepared in exile.

Since the Stuarts and their supporters defended absolute
monarchy on the principle of the divine right of the king,
Locke directed his chief attack against this doctrine, and not
against the more systematic theory of absolute government
presented by Hobbes; but the positive argument of Locke con-
stitutes a criticism and correction of Hobbes’ theory. Rebut-
ting the doctrine of divine right on its own ground, that of
scriptural interpretation, he offers a defense of self-government
which is independent of religious premises.

Starting as did Hobbes from the concept of the self-deter-
minate individual, Locke immediately diverges from Hobbes in
his conception of the individual, whom be finds to be naturally,
prior to dl government, bound to his fellows in moral associa-
tion. Thus the initial concept of Locke is really that of a society
or moral community, composed of free individuals who are
bound to one another by reciprocal friendship and concern.
This moral individualism of Locke is often confused -with the
nonmoral individualism of Hobbes and others; but this con-
fusion leaves Locke’s political philosophy quite unintelligible
I and robs his theory of all moral basis. The initial principle of
democracy places aU moral responsibility in the individual per-

THE BERTH OF MODERN SOCIETY

209

rion of this theory, as it must be the intention of any theory
which proposes to invalidate absolute government, to deny
intrinsic authority to the state, and to locate all authority and
all ultimate power in the people, which is conceived to be inde-
pendent of the state, to be prior to the state, and to outlast the
state.

The foundation of this theory is its affirmation of the good-
ness of the individual human being. Only if man is moral can
he be worthy or capable of self-government. This does not
mean that man is always and everywhere incapable of evil. It
means that man is essentially or generally good; above all, it
means that no line can divide people into two species of beings,
one good and therefore worthy of exercising government, the
other bad and therefore unworthy to govern. If men axe gen-
erally good, and all men govern, government will be generally
good. But the goodness of man lies finally in his free moral will.
It is because man is a free moral agent, able to know and choose
between good and evil, that he is invested with inalienable
authority. No individual and no group of individuals has the
right to deny to another individual or group of individuals the
exercise of moral judgment and power. Democracy is the only
form of government which does not at some point deny this
conception of the moral nature of man.

Since all authority or right whatsoever inheres in the human
individual, one cannot exhaustively list the “rights of man.”
Locke emphasized especially, as natural rights which require a
specific limitation of governmental power, the rights of reli-
gion freedom and of property. It should be obvious that an
individual can delegate to no one else his religious responsi-
bilities; and just government may accordingly exercise no
authority of any sort over religious belief. Locke extended this
requirement of religious toleration to all save Romanists, who,
he believed, were by their allegiance to Rome compelled to
deny toleration to others, and thus prevented from entPitiTig r
into the compact establishing free government.

the birth of modern society 21 1

therefore, of the right of a people to regulate through its gov-
ernment its economic life. "V^y, therefore, should there be any
limit to the extent of this economic regulation? If government
is controlled by the people, should not the people through its
government exert complete and absolute economic control?

To answer this question intelligently, we should observe that
every sort of control exercised in human society is either
directly economic, or dependent upon economic means. This is
true of the control exerted by a people upon its government,
as well as that exerted through its government. Laws are not
effective until they are administered; and the administration
of law is effected and controlled by means of monetary appro-
priations. It is not enough, in order to know the political form
of a society, to know its written constitution. The written
constitution may appear to be democratic, yet leave govern-
ment autocratic. The constitution is effective only if it is mate-
rially implemented. But we learn the political form’ of a society
unmistakably when we discover the sources and controls of the
monies and other economic powers at the disposal of its govern-
ment.

Thus a government not dependent upon appropriations,
ultimately derived from taxes voted freely by property owners,
may hire an army which makes it independent of every con-
trol — except, perhaps, that exerted upon government by the
army itself. Governments are in the last resort groups of men;
and to place in the hands of any group of men complete con-
trol of the national economy will automatically place those
men beyond popular control. This is not only a theoretical
deduction. It is also a generalization from facts which have
always been apparent. There are countries today in which such
complete economic control not only makes government com-
pletely independent of public opinion, but places it beyond the
threat of popular revolution. Thus the proposal to secure to the
people complete control of its economic life by means of gov-
ernment ownership, or unlimited governmental power over

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIETY

213

private ownership, Locke also provided the means which
would preserve this principle from abuse. He did this by defin-
ing property as the product of labor. Locke meant, of course,
every sort of labor, and did not narrow the term, as we unfor-
tunately narrow it, to specify only certain types of economic
activity. This principle, taken in its whole meaning, provides a
basis for broad legislation securing to all individuals that eco-
nomic justice which is in fact, most would agree, a condition as
well as an objective of democratic practice.

Locke’s political philosophy gets its full weight only when
it is placed in the context of his general philosophy, which we
will consider in a later chapter; but it constitutes as it stands
the classical exposition of democratic political theory, and the
basis upon which was erected and still is established the con-
stitutional democracy of today. The theory is not affected by
any criticism of the concepts of “natural law” and “natural
rights,” in terms of which Locke presented it. This language,
appropriate to Locke’s time, only denoted the facts of moral
responsibility and moral community which every adequate
social and political theory must recognize. There are really
only two kinds of political theory and practice. There is demo-
cratic theory and practice, which places moral authority in the
individual human being and derives all governmental powers
and social values from this; and there is absolutistic theory and
practice, or the “philosophy of the state,” which ostensibly
locates authority and value in some institution, but really
locates it in some hereditary or self-appointed group of indi-
viduals, identified with the state.

Democracy is not one of a number of political forms, among
which we may choose that most appropriate to present circum-
stance. Democracy cannot afford to be relativistic. Democracy
is the acknowledgment in theory and practice of the fact
of individuality, which fact is the source of all natural moral
law. As we shall see later, democracy is the practical applica-
tion in human relations of those selfsame principles winch in

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIETY

215

preciation of the development of modern science, allowing us
to understand its method and to grasp its presuppositions. This
study, which we begin in the following chapter, will be our
concern to the end of the book. Just as Greek philosophy was
a reflection upon Greek science, so modem philosophy has
been a reflection upon the methods and results of modern
science, especially in their implications for social and political
life.

Notes for Further Reading

1. Sabine, G. H., A History of Political Theory. New York,

Henry Holt and Company, Chaps. XVIl-XXVI, 1937.

2. Figgis, J. N., “Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century.’'

Cambridge Modem History ^ New York, The Macmillan
Company, 1904, Vol. Ill, Chap. 22.

3. Smith, P., The Age of the Reformation. New York, Henry

Holt and Company, 1920.

4. Machiavelli, N., The Prince. Chicago, Packard and Company,

1941, also various editions.

5. Lanquet, H., A Defense of Liberty against Tyrants^ introd. by

H. J. Laski, New York, Harcourt Brace and Company, Inc.,
1924.

6. Laski, H. J., “The Rise of Liberalism.” Encyclopaedia of the

Social Sciences. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1930,
VoL 1 .

7. Gooch, G. P., English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth

Century. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1927.

8. Laird, J., Hobbes. London and New York, Oxford University

Press, 1934.

9. Hobbes, T,, Leviathan. Garden City, Doubleday Doran and

Company, 1937, Parts I and IL

10. Smith, A. L., “English Political Philosophy in the Seventeenth

and Eighteenth Centuries,” Cambridge Modern History^
New York, The Macmillan Company, 1909, Vol. VI.

11. Laski, H. J., Political Thought in England from Locke to

Bentham. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1920.

12. Lamprecht, S., The Moral and Political Philosophy of John

Locke. New York, Columbia University Press, Archives of
Philosophy, No. ii, 1918.

THE RISE OR MODERN SCIENCE iI7

and primarily it was an exodus out of the cloister, into the
several vernaculars of western Europe, of the Latin learning
of the medieval clerics. It was also a recovery and temporary
adoration of the classical and pagan cultures of antiquity. But
finally and most importantly it was the expression of a new
outlook upon nature and man, a new attitude toward fact,
and a new enterprise of the human spirit. This new mind
eludes definition, but we can perceive and indicate its most
important features.

First, perhaps, we should note its great swing to an orienta-
tion upon the future, after centuries intellectually focused
upon the past. Out of this reorientation was bom the most
dynamic and creative as well as the most revolutionary and
turbulent force in the modem world, to wit the concept of
progress. The new vista upon an unlimited human progress is
perhaps the deepest meaning of the phrases, such as the Renais-
sance, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason, which men
coined to express their satisfaction with and their confidence in
the new prospect. This concept of progress was incorporated
into and supported by the new science. Greek science, and
after it medieval science, had conceived of a completed wis-
dom, progressive perhaps in its application to new situations
and problems, but essentially static and whole. Socrates had
not been able to convert men to his conception of science as a
pursuit of knowledge, something at once less and more than the
possession of knowledge; but modem science has conceived
itself to be a progressive exploration of nature rather t han a
final statement of eternal and fixed truth. With this increas-
ing faith in a progressive science has come new faith in the
contmuous improvement of human nature and the conditions
of human life. We find the distant origins of this new faith in
the gospel of hope and deliverance announced by early Chris-
tianity. Medieval Christianity had fixated Christian faith upon
a supernatural and otherworldly goal, to be attained only after
death; but the Reformation, returning to earliest Christianity

THE RISE OF MODERN SaENCE

219

The earlier poems and comedies of Shakespeare we may dis-
miss, since they illustrate chiefly the superficial neoclassicism
which is sometimes still identified with the Renaissance, but
which was truly only its accident. In this neoclassical art the
artist tried, impossibly, to re-create the thought and imagina-
tion of Greek antiquity; and he succeeded only in appropriat-
ing the archaic mythology and the external conventions of
antique art, grasping nothing of the antique spirit. He remained
still a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century European, rather ludi-
crously cavorting in tunic or toga.

The historical plays of Shakespeare, however, already boldly
innovate the realism of modem art. If these plays are read in
the chronological order of their events, they will be found to
constitute a single drama of epical dimensions, telling of the
curse with its fatal repercussions which was the War of the
Roses, the curse being lifted and the bloody sequence ended
through the accession of Henry Tudor. The theme is remini-
scent of the great trilogy of Aeschylus; and Shakespeare’s new
realism appears in this, that where the Greek poet took his
theme from mythology, Shakespeare made use of not so distant
history to portray the working of natural and moral law. Here
in modem art, as in modem science, is a subordination of
imagination to historical and particular fact.

But it was in his tragedies, and especially in Hamlet, that
Shakespeare reached that mental and moral crisis out of which
sprang his supremest art, revealing his full and still immeasur-
able stature. In the earlier tragedies he had still conformed to
the medieval roster of virtues and vices. Othello is jealousy,
Coriolanus and Caesar are ambition, Macbeth is vacillation,
Lear is vanity masked by paternal fondness. But in Ha?nlet,
Shakespeare calls into question the moral foundations of the
universe. That unusual impartiality, with which in the earlier
dramas both heroes and villains are sympathetically understood,
now becomes the center of the play.

It is customary to call Hamlet a work so profound as to be

THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE

221

philosophy- and ethics of the last three centuries. It is not an
irreligious, still less is it an immoral naturalism; but it is religion
and morality without dogma, in pursuit of widening vision and
creative power.

The intellectual revolution and inauguration which genius
such as that of Shakespeare and Buonarroti announced in art
had its theoretical parallel in science. To the Pole fan Kopemik
(1473-1543) we credit the “Copemican revolution” which
was so much more than an astronomical hypothesis afBrming
the revolution of the earth about the sun. Why did the Coper-
nican theory arouse such dissension, such ardent support and
resolute opposition, that intellectual Europe was divided by it
into two belligerent camps? From the viewpoint of today, the
Copemican astronomy only further applied the scientific
method initiated by the Pythagoreans, and cultivated in some
measure throughout the intervening ages. Strictly speaking,
this solar-centric astronomy constituted only an appropriation
of Greek science, with its commitment to mathematical prin-
ciples and celestial spheres. Copernicus gave to the circular mo-
tions a new center in the sun; but this had been proposed by
Aristarchus of Samos shortly after 300 B.a; and we find that
Copernicus gave due credit to his Pythagorean sources. Yet
this Copemican hypothesis shocked western Europe out of its
dogmatic slumber, by requiring a new and strange conception
of the world. It returned, after centuries of Aristotle and
Aristotelianized Platonism, to the mathematical methods of
Pythagoras and Plato himself, ignoring and discrediting the
Aristotelian science which was now the basis of scholastic
theology and the content of scholastic learning.

Secondly, because the work of Aristarchus had been neg-
lected and forgotten, the h3q)othesis appeared as a bold and
independent advance going beyond all earlier achievement;
and thus it established the intellectual parity of living man
with antiquity, or even his intellectual superiority. For seven-
teen or more centuries the conclusions of fourth-century

THE RISE or MODERN SCIENCE 22}

they worked steadily and creatively, in England and later in
France, to produce the discipline which has developed into
modem physical science. After Occam, who directed the
new science on its way, we find Nicholas d’Autricourt apply-
ing atomistic concepts, to facilitate the reduction of particular
causal sequences to measurable and mathematically formulable
displacements. John Buridan fashioned the fruitful concept of
impetus or momentum. Albert of Saxony defined the center of
gravity of a body and the principle of gravitational accelera-
tion. And Nicholas Oresmus elaborated the mathematical cal-
culi which made possible the applications of these concepts to
particular physical situations. These and other medieval
thinkers, most of them Franciscan clerics, created the terrestrial
physics which in the hands of Newton was to be mightily
enlarged, to swallow up the celestial astronomy of Copernicus
and Kepler, and to establish the universal yet empirical study
of fact which is modem science.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the
new science emerged from the cloister, and was much stimu-
lated by its application to secular and practical uses. Navigators
looked to it for new instruments and for a new cartography.
Builders of ships, docks, and canals encouraged inquiry into
the principles of hydrostatics, discovering the stresses exerted
in and by fluids. There was considerable invention of simple
machinery applying mechanical principles, and a great devel-
opment of mining and metallurgy, often scientifically directed.
Merchants encouraged the invention of new methods of cal-
culation and bookkeeping. It was a great age, holding in
embryo the industrial world which was to come. Most notable
of these practical interests encouraging science, it must be con-
fessed, was the desire for new arts of war, which stimulated
Galileo’s study of the morion of projectiles.

Galileo Galilei of Pisa (1564—1642) owes his popular fame
to his confirmation of the Copemican theory, and to his adher-
ence to this hypothesis in face of ecclesiastical opposition. Sum-

THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE

225

The principle of gravitation states that material bodies will at-
tract one another according to the product of their masses and
the inverse square of their distance. Why attract, and not
repel? 'Why attract according to the product and not the sum
of the masses? Why the inverse square, rather than the inverse
cube, of their distances? There is no answer to these questions,
except the answer that this is the way in which material bodies
observ'ably behave. The principle, in short, is inductive, not
rational — ^it is a summary of particular observations, not the
deliverance of a prescient reason. Newton, as a matter of fact,
entertained many alternative and equally reasonable hypo-
theses, before he discovered that which exactly conformed to
his data.

If we will keep steadily before our minds this character of
the principle of gravitation, a principle at once umversd yet
inductive or empirical, we shall follow with understanding the
whole later development of modem thought. The significance
of this principle is its implied teaching that the whole character
of nature, even its largest, most ultimate, and most basic char-
acter, is to be known by observation and in no other way.
Modem science accepts this implication. We therefore call it
“empirical science,” indicating in this way that its conclusions
are derived wholly from sense-experience. Because Greek and
medieval science believed the largest principles of knowledge
to be established by reason alone, and to be applied to experi-
ence and imposed upon experience by the reason, we properly
call that earlier science “rational” and “nonempirical.”

Newton may properly be regarded, therefore, as the chief
founder of modem science. In the principle of gravitation he
confirmed and securely established the science which his pred-
ecessors, from Grosseteste and Roger Bacon onward, had
initiated. The later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
dimly felt this peculiar importance of Newton’s science. They
saw in Newton the great frontispiece of a new “age of reason,”
and the source of a new “enlightenment.”

THE RISE OF M(»ERN SCIENCE 227

genuinely empirical, we see; yet it still confused inductive
knowledge, reached by observation, with rational principles
supposedly inherent in the mind prior to experience. Was it
materialistic, or Platonic.!’ It was Platonic in its mathematical
approach and in its mathematical anatomy; but did it not seek
to explain everything as a consequence of the motions, distribu-
tions, and inertias of material particles? In a sense it did; but it
recognized also the two infinite media of space and time, which
support and condition all this mechanical occurrence; and space
and time seem to be immaterial. But are space and time effec-
tive? Are not space and time just passive conditions, necessary
to but in no way determining mechanical occurrence? Newton
himself spoke of space as the sensorium of God, meaning that
it functions as a divine .medium conditioning everytlung that
happens, but affecting everything equally, so that its effect
cannot be measured and may be canceled out of our calcula-
tions. Today the physicist inclines to believe that space is effec-
tive, and that it conations material motion variously and there-
fore calculably; but he is also inclined to explain the character
of space at any place as determined by matter at or near that
place, and this is again a materialistic view. Today we are
aware of radiant energies such as light, which do not conform
to the formulas applicable to solid matter; but Newton, who
developed this science of light, conceived light to be made up
of material corpuscles; and contemporary science now con-
ceives of the transmutability of radiant energy and matter.

We should conclude, perhaps, that the Newtonian science
was materialistic, but that it raised the question of the relation
between the material constituents of nature and the fixed
“laws” or principles which these constituents seem to obey in
all of their motions. The question is whether the universal
principles are determined by the material motions, or the mate-
rial motions determined by the universal principles. The seven-
teenth century was apt to answer this question unhesitatingly,,
uncritically, and piously. The principles were taken to be the

THE RISE OF MOTERN SCIENCE

229

tively perpetuates itself in the individual uniqueness of things?

Unfortunately these questions have never been put with
sufficient clearness by later philosophy. Two habits of mind
have worked to prevent a clear discernment of the problem,
as it is perpetuated in modified form in modem science- The
first of these habits is just the Greek and medieval philosophy
itself. Where the thinker did not clearly perceive the differ-
ence between modem science and earlier science, namely its
departure from the Greek dualism, he did not give up the now
obsolete concepts of form- and matter, but tried confusedly to
make use of them in estimating the results of modem science.
The second obstractive habit of mind was that established by
the medieval nominalists. Why not say, said the nominalists,
that particulars alone are real, and that universal forms are
just mental fictions, resident only in the mind? This easy dis-
position of the problem still appeals to overspecialized and
myopic minds. Why not suppose, these contemporary nom-
inalists say, that our scientific theories are only useful mental
constracts, facilitating the recall or anticipation of particular
sense impressions? Suppose we do say this — ^have we solved our
problem? Do not these mental constracts still function as uni-
versals, whenever we use them in relation to particular sense-
experience? And do they not exist in ourselves? We do not
solve the problem of universal knowledge by confining uni-
versals to the mind. We only renounce all hope of solving the
problem, or forbid its discussion. The real problem is still
where it was for the Greeks, in the world and not in the mind.
To know how and why we can have a general knowledge of
facts which in themselves are wholly particularized, we must
know how and why particular things or particular events con-
form, or at least seem to conform, to general and universal
principles. Why are things so amilar, and similar in just such
and such ways?

The result especially of this second habit of min d was to
convert a real and genuinely scientific problem, namely the

the rise of modern science 231

Plato pointed in the right empirical direction when he in-
structed his students to “save the appearances,” i.e. to work
toward the closest conformity of hypothesis to observed fact;
but modem science is not concerned merely to save the ap-
pearances— it makes the appearances its whole criterion of
truth. Modem science is hard put to save the theory. Modern
science is faithful to Plato in its pursuit of theoretical knowl-
edge, mathematically formulated; but it conjoins with the
Platonic rationalism, first, Aristotle’s identification of real being
with individual being or particular fact; and second, the Greek
atomist’s denial of chance, his insistence on complete causal
determinism. Nothing in intellectual history is so astonishing,
so strange, so disturbing, and also so pregnant, as the successful
union in modem science of principles which to earlier thought
seemed irreconcilably incompatible, and which to many eradite
minds seem so still.

Notice finally that the new science, at least in its Newtonian
form, comprised a great philosophy or metaphysic. It postu-
lated the reality of ultimate material particles, moving in the
independent and infinite media of space and time, and causally
influencing one another according to a definable set of uni-
versally effective principles. So universal and comprehensive
a conception constitutes a philosophy, a metaphysical system.
We can, of course, proceed to further philosophical discussion
of the problems which arise in the persistent application of this
science, or which dwell in its inherent implications; but this
should not blind us to the fact that a science like modem
physics is itself a philosophy, at least if we believe in it and
accept its results. We cannot simply accept physics as “science”
and then have recourse to another science, wliich we please to
call “philosophy,” for our preferred trath. If we accept science
as scientific tmth, we are committed to a philosophy which
will comprehend and be relevant to the findings of science.
The Newtonian science, of course, has been expanded and
modified, recently in very radical ways; but it still at any and

THE RISE OF MODERN SOENCE

233

Until the twentieth century, modern society was upborne
by this tide of faith, out of which was generated great strength,
high achievement, and a very real sum of human good. In the
strength of this faith it transformed itself, not everywhere but
in strategic areas, into the great democratic, intellectualized,
and industrialized economy we know today. No faith less
wide or less ardent can support this tremendous organized
economy of life and work. It is not merely the further progress
of man, it is the continued existence of modem society that
depends upon this faith. The hope and faith of a society is the
measure which finally shapes and governs all of its history.

During the nineteenth century, eloquent voices called into
question this modem faith. Thoughtful minds became con-
fused and uncertain as the modem age revealed its material
potentialities, and there was a loss of nerve. In the twentieth
century, intellecmal leaders especially in European society
began to separate themselves from “the masses” which still
adhered to the now familiar faith in a progressive justice and
trath. Confused and misled by these leaders, and perverted by
more sinister forces, European society became tom by inter-
national and social conflicts, which already in our own time
have well-nigh completed its ruin. The somewhat perfervid
idealism of the earlier centuries gave way to skepticism, pes-
simism, and moral atavism. To many, it seemed that the science
which had promised complete insight had failed to reach ob-
jective tmth, or had provided only a trivial trath which tells
us nothing of what we most need to know. Society appears
less like a moral community, it was felt, than a battleground of
ceaseless warfare between pressure-groups; and the vaunted
movement of progress, it was concluded, is but a foolish and
unintelligible dogma, incompatible with a science which finds
in nature only a determinate but nonmoral sequence of events.

So time has brought us through another of its apparent
circles, setting us again where Plato stood when he defended
the intellectual and moral faith of Greece against a sophistry

1 3 THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY

OF MODERN SCIENCE

In this and three sucxieeding chapters we will
discuss the two chief trends of thought, respectively
rationalistic and empirical, which were stimulated by the de-
velopment of modem science, and which proposed to establish
more firmly, and to elucidate and explain, the method and
presuppositions of the new science.

In pursuing this effort, philosophy becomes increasingly sep-
arated from science, at least in name. Earlier, science had been
but ‘‘natural philosophy.” Even in the nineteenth century
scientific treatises were still published under this title. We
pointed out that Parmenides had distinguished philosophy
from science when he concentrated his attention upon the
theoretical or logical form of Greek science, in abstraction
from its specialized content. But this distinction, although per-
petuated in the study of logic (which engages the form of
scientific language in abstraction from its content) had not
been supposed to involve a separation of philosophy from
science.

Today a good deal of confusion attends this subject of the
relationship between philosophy and science. Their true rela-

235

THE RATIONAUSTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 237

best illustrated by chemistry. There are still a few thinkers
who attempt this impossible inclusion of all fact within a
special science. The best-known form of this fallacy is the
brand of materialism which would force physics or chemistry
to swallow all other science. It should be clear that if the
sciences did really compose only one science, scientists would
have established this unitary science themselves, by empirical
methods. The multiplication of special sciences is conclusive
evidence that fact does not reduce to any one special hypoth-
esis; and to insist that it must do so is merely a form of
rationalism or dogmatian, an insistence that nature must be
what we personally desire it to be.

However, over and above this fact of the plurality of special
sciences, there is another and more compelling fact which pre-
cludes our elevation of any special science, or even the sum
of the special sciences, into a universal comprehension of fact.
This is the presence within each science of an apparent con-
tradiction. Modem science rests firmly upon two criteria of
trath. One, the primary and dominant criterion, is the shape
and character of observable particular fact. The other criterion,
subordinate but still indispensable, is logical consistency. Mod-
em science assumes that some theoretical formulation will
comprehend all the evidence of particular fact in a given
field; and it is this assumption which supports rationalism,
which stresses the conformity of nature everywhere to logical
principles. Modem science escapes dogmatism, in spite of its
apparent rationalism, by its readiess to abandon any and every
theoretical formulation, even the most comprehensive, which
fails to satisfy all of the empirical evidence. This compromise
works excellently, and is the generating dynamo of scientific
achievement; but it does not explain itself, it constimtes an ap-
parent contradiction. The rationalistic or logical requirement,
effectively applied in every pursuit of large theory, postulates
some universal character in nature to which all particular fact
must conform; but the empirical requirement postulates the

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 239

somewhat to include in its chronological place the work of
Francis Bacon.

As we began our account of the rise of modem science with
some mention of Gspemicus, we may well begin this summa^
of modem philosophy with Bmno, whose speculation was in
many ways an effort to appreciate in its ftdl significance the
revolutionary Copemican theory. The life of Giordano Bnmo
(1548-1600) is the vignette of a stormy and religiously con-
vulsed age. Bom in Naples, he was early initiated into the
Dominican order. From this rigorous discipline he fled to the
Protestant church, where he found even less comfort. He then
wandered persecuted over Europe, teaching, quarreling, pub-
lishing when he could. Finally he was betrayed to the Inquisi-
tion, which burned him at the stake for his heresies.

Brano’s blessing and curse was an intellectual imagination
w illing to draw from the Copemican hypothesis its maximum
consequence. If the earth is not the center of the universe, he
argued, there is no center, nor any conceivable bound. The
universe is infinite and homogeneous, and any part of it is as
important and representative as any other part. God is equally
manifest in everything — there is no privileged and locable
“heaven.” The iiifinite universe displays the infinite being of
God. Infinity cannot be extensively grasped. We can know
nature only intensively, in its individual items. The item we
know best is our individual self, of which we have an immedi-
ate and concrete intuition. Reflection discovers in the self a
creative activity or moral will which is the microcosm or small
edition of the universal macrocosm, the infinite activity of
God. Our understanding of reality must be exploratory rather
than definitive. Nature is like a face, which we comprehend
by appreciating its several parts in their relationship. Our per-
sonal lives similarly set forth our souls or characters, because
they are the creations of our wUls. The infinite character of
God is therefore revealed to us, in some degree, in all the visible
creation of nature, which it is our duty and privilege to study

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE

241

brilliaat special pleader, together with his high position, gave
him an intellectual authority which was out of proportion to
his limited knowledge of science; but his fame and abilities
made him the most successful advocate of modem science.
Even Bacon’s limitations probably served him well — ^they were
those of the European public he wished to influence. A Hume
or a Kant would have had less immediate success.

Bacon’s work had two sides, respectively critical and con-
stractive. He opened his Novum Orgamim with a blast against
all medieval learning and scholastic philosophy. Earlier scholar-
ship, he wrote, had been little else than book learning and in-
tellectual idolatry. It had been subservient to racial habits of
mind (the “idols of the tribe”), personal prepossessions (the
“idols of the cave”), tradition, especially scholastic tradition
(the “idols of the theatre”), and habits incorporate in language
(the “idok of the marketplace”). Nowhere had it served truth,
which is discovered only by persistent and dutiful observation.
Let book learning be the useless tedium of priests! Nature will
be the study of men who directly draw from their observation
of fact the power to control nature and man.

Later centuries have responded perhaps too readily to this
Baconian exhortation to cut oneself off from past intellectual
tradition, in order to extract from sheer fact a knowledge
which has no presuppositions whatsoever. Admirable in its
encouragement of critical and observant habit. Bacon’s teach-
ing suffers from its neglect of the continuity of man’s intel-
lectual evolution. Xhis weakness becomes apparent in Bacon’s
description of science. In truth, modem science revived and
widened an intellectual tradition which had been preserved for
twenty-two centuries, ever since its inception in ancient Ionia;
but because he was ignorant or unappreciative of this long evo-
lution, which he knew only in its medieval decline. Bacon
failed to grasp the ideal of theoretical unity, which is a source
and guide of modem science no less than it was of earlier
science.

THE RATIONALIsnC PHILOSOPHY OP MODERN SCIENCE 243

using them and noting their implications and presuppositions;
but only the creative scientist is qualified to reveal the
“method” of science. Since this method is that of genius, it
eludes definition, and can be appreciated only in its achieve-
ments. Newton is said to have reached his gravitational hy-
pothesis by observing the fall of an apple from a tree; but what
was the breadth and content of thought that could read into the
fall of an apple the fall of moon to earth and of tide to moon,
and pursue this analogy through mathematical labyrinths never
traced before? Was that an “induction” from observed in-
stances? In some sort, perhaps; but in what sort?

Bacon’s writings, if we may accept the evidence of seven-
teenth-century literature, were the chief stimulus of the rather
facile optimism which called itself “the Enlightenment.” The
spokesmen of the Enlightenment regarded all earlier time, with
some reservations respecting pagan antiquity, as an age of
darkness from which reason or science now at last delivered
man — and delivered him completely, into perfect light. This
curious obliviousness of medieval antecedents was due in part
to the linguistic shift from Latin to the European vernaculars;
yet Francis Bacon and Descartes, the two chief literary sources
of the Enlightenment, were Latin scholars deeply indebted to
medieval literature. They gave expression, we must condude,
to a real and widespread desire, current in their time, to shake
off all the past and to advance in the power of certain new
conceptions of nature and man to an unparalleled future. The
writers of the Enlightenment were able to convince their con-
temporaries, and even the later centuries as well, that reason
appeared on earth suddenly and without antecedents, this in-
teresting event occurring in or about the year i6oo. Thus we
are told to see in Francis Bacon, who owed whatever he knew
to medieval predecessors, “the father of modem science”; and
Descartes is held up as “the founder of modem philosophy.”
Seldom has a culture drawn such a veil between itself and its

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 245

the cover to a new and revolutionary theory of nature, man,
and society. What Descartes meant was nothing less than this:
Applied mathematics is our sole science, its results are certain
and its range unlimited, and all our other beliefs must be estab-
lished upon or accommodated to this basic and certain
knowledge.

Descartes, a frail lad, was educated by Jesuits in northern
France. He was there impressed, he tells us, only by his mathe-
matical studies, all other instruction seeming futile. Where
Descartes learned his contempt for scholastic philosophy and
his inclination to Augustinian and Calvinistic theology is an
interesting question. After sampling the salon life of Paris and
finding it trivial and hectic, he took refuge in the army. One
cold night before a coal fire there came to him the vision of a
new science and a new world. Descartes is so modest in his
account of this vision that its radical implications are easily
overlooked. One sees the cool and lucid rationalist, and misses
the social reformer whose utopian optimism has stimulated the
most violent social revolutions of the modem age. This new
science, Descartes believed, would within the near future place
in man’s hands a power allowing him complete control over
every human condition. Disease, poverty, crime, and war
would be eliminated; and human society would be established
upon a new and completely rational basis. Until such time as
this millennium was reached, Descartes discreetly promised, he
would conform to the usual moral conventions and live as
other men.

Appreciate first the scientific vision of Descartes! Greek
geometry had analysed static surfaces and volumes, carved out
of empty space. The new analytic geometry seemed to lay
hold of the properties of motion itself. Given three straight
lines at right angles and intersecting at a point, any motion
can be described by reference to these three coordinates. A
series of such references defines a fine, or the path of a motion;
and a set of such lines may be used to define any physical sitta-

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 247

science, which always supplements this doctrine of absolute
mobile continuity with theories presupposing a discontinuity
of stuff in nature. Nor is the conception of a mobile continuum
itself clear or complete. Physical theory distinguishes many
types or species of motion or energy, in its accommodation of
thK concept of dynamic continuity to the discrete and articu-
late world which is presented to our senses. Descartes’ concep-
tion of nature, no less than that of Plato, harbors a dualism
according to which a static, universal form, eternally defined
by the axioms of geometry, invests the particular motions
which variously manifest this eternal form; and as with Plato,
the relation between universal form and particular motion
must be left wholly unintelligible. Since this dynamic concept
of nature is difficult and perhaps impossible to clarify, it is
usually replaced by a mechanical conception which conceives
nature to be constituted wholly of some sort of clockwork,
intricate and infinite. Descartes himself often slipped into this
mechanical conception when presenting or applying his dy-
namic theory.

One great virtue of this Cartesian concept of nature is its
rigorous determinism. Everything that happens, at any time
and place, even in its most minute features, is held to be com-
pletely necessitated by its spatio-temporal context. There is no
accident, no chance, no element of formless “matter” in nature
itself. Events are accidental or due to chance only in the sense
that we are ignorant of their causes and powerless to control
these. Perfect knowledge would see everything in nature to
be wholly necessitated, and therefore completely intelligible.
This mechanistic concept of nature would seem to be the con-
dition of a complete understanding and an absolute control of
natural occurrence.

But where does man belong in this mechanistic world? He
cannot, Descartes concludes, belong in it at all. The mind of
man, which observes, knows, and within its powers controls
material nature, must be wholly other than nature, no part

raE RATIOKALISnC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 249

Descartes called physical nature “matter,” and said that the
essence of matter is extension,” meaning that the true form of
physical nature is its geometrical pattern. He similarly speaks
of conscious experience as “mind,” and says that the “essence
of mind” is thought or scientific analysis. This language is
really a concession to scholastic philosophy, and a source of
confusion in Descartes’ philosophy; but it was nevertheless
indispensable to his system. Our immediate apprehension of
nature is wholly unlike that colorless, soundless, perfectly
geometrical and mobile continuum which nature becomes in
Descartes’ science. The really physical characters of things,
Descartes believed, are proper to external reality itself; but
all color, taste, and other sensible character is wholly in and
of the mind, being a mental confusion, due to our intellectual
passivity, of the true mathematical pattern of nature. What
earlier philosophy held to be accidental and unintelligible in
the world, and ascribed to “matter” in distinction from
“form,” Descartes finds to be an illusion in the mind, where,
however, it really exists as sensations, feelings, and other non-
rational activities. When reason is active, all of this confused
mental material is eliminated or transmuted, to leave us with a
rational understanding of the real motions of nature in their
purely geometrical character. There is the real physical world,
composed of sheer motion; there is the real mind, constituted
by a true and rational apprehension of physical motion; and
then there is a sort of iridescence, produced by the confusion
of physical reality and mind, but truly nothing. The power of
the Cartesian philosophy lay chiefly in the simplicity and
clarity of its positive teaching. This was, that mathematical
science truly portrays external reality. With resoluteness it
ignored, or dismissed as illusion, whatever presented difficulties
to this doctrine.

Yet what a strange, stark, and really terrible doctrine it is!
Man is to be identified with his reason, which finds in external
reality only an infinite, colorless, silent waste of physical mo-

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 25 1

nature, and by virtue of its intuitive power perfectly illuminate
that limited area. He thinks of scientific theory as being already
completed in mathematical theory, the expansion of science
being only the continued application of this theory to ever
new areas of nature. He does not conceive of a development
of scientific hypothesis, stimulated by widening experience
and reaching new basic principles.

Modem rationalism, thus initiated by Descartes, differs im-
portantly from the earlier rationalism established by the Greek
philosophers. That earlier rationalism was a dualism of matter
and form. It conceived nature to be everywhere dual, each
existent thing and process being compounded of two sorts of
being, namely of eternal and perfect form, and of shifting
matter which is the source of imperfection and change. The
Qurtesian dualism of matter and mind is something very dif-
ferent. It conceives nature to be everywhere perfectly formed,
what seems imperfect or unintelligible being truly an illusion
in our minds, which are no part of nature. Yet the distinction
between the particular changing detail and the universal geo-
metrical form of nature must st5l be preserved, although there
is now no philosophical place for it; and this seems to introduce
again, but now unconsciously and disingenuously, the matter-
form dualism which is explicitly rejected. Further, the Greek
rationalism was genuinely idealitic. It conceived the universal
form of nature to be the goal or end toward which all things
strain, and in the reaching of which lies their natural good.
Only for minds, according to modem rationalism, does form
constitute an ideal of this sort. Nature is perfect in its absolute
geometry; but imperfect man must still strain to know this
form, the intuition of which is its cognitive ideal. Does this
mean that nature is wholly good, that every prospect pleases
and only man is vile.? Or does it mean that nature is nonmoral,
its values arising solely out of its utility for man ? Or is nature
beyond good and evil, is it a sort of absolute contentment be-
yond all striving? It is evident that the Cartesian dualism, in

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE I53

in the method and form of modem science. Because it seemed
to make the new science simple and rational; because it seemed
to offer a much needed ground for intellectual and political
authority; because it promised a social millennium in an “age
of reason”; because it expressed the high optimism of the
Renaissance and seemed to turn its back upon the past; because,
paradoxically, it also brought into philosophy certain moral
and religious conceptions implicit in the Puritan Reformation;
because it verbally bridged the gap between scholastic theology
and the new scientific outlook; and, finally, because it was
presented in a prose so lucid and effective that it has remained
the model of French style ever since — for these reasons, the
Cartesian philosophy had enormous mfluence. It established a
rationalistic tradition which developed and modified itself with
each succeeding generation, to become a permanent factor in
modem thought; and its importance and success were not, of
course, without reason, being due to the undeniable rational
element in modem science, which cleaves to its theoretical
form and everywhere requires the accommodation of fact to
the requirements of logic. We shall not be able to estimate the
value of the thought of Descartes, consequently, until we have
come to some conclusion concerning this relation of empirical
fact to logical form. What Descartes too much neglected, we
saw, was the empirical element in modern science, this being
its most characteristic and important element.

Notes for Further Reading

1. Boulting, W., Giordano Bruno. London, K. Paul, Trench,

Triibner and Company, Ltd., 1916.

2. McClure, M. T., Bacon: Selectio 7 is. New York, Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1928.

3. Wheelwright, P., Bacon, Hobbes, Locke: Selectiojis. Garden

City, Doubleday Doran and Company, 1930.

4. Kennedy, G., Bacon, Hobbes, Locke: Selections. New York,

Doubleday Doran and Company, 1937.

14

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY
OF MODERN SCIENCE

(Continued)

F

JLj SPECIALLY ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE, THE

thought of Descartes became the starting-point of
many who wished to emancipate themselves from past tradi-
tion, and to establish life and society upon a purely rational,
indisputable basis. As we have seen, the Cartesian system was
by no means so complete a break with earlier thought as he
and his contemporaries believed. His mathematical concept of
physical nature improved upon that of Pythagoras; his dualism
of physical and mental being gave philosophical room to the
Christian dualism of world and spirit, the sacred and the pro-
fane; his theology was Augustinian and scholastic. But these
traditional elements, which allowed Descartes to reach his
readers, largely served as a bridge which could be crossed and
then burned and forgotten. They constituted a sort of religious
background, taking care of the inscrutable and allowing the
foreground of thought to be brilliantly illuminated. By most of
Descartes’ readers, a method so powerful and a reason so lucid
was expected to overcome every problem. Men of less genius
did not see that his power was the clarity with which he
perceived the limitations of his rationalistic method. Descartes

THE RATIONAUSTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 257

any better than we understand how physical body affects
mind? To say that the motion lost by one body is only trans-
ferred to the body with which it collides allows us to describe
such events in mathematical equations; but it does not explain
how the transfer of motion takes place. Motion is a bodily
property, and how can bodies exchange properties? The causal
coimection remains unexplained and inexplicable, and we must
say that one physical event only occasions another, the true
cause being God. The Cartesian doctrine, at first sight so lucid
and rational, evaporates into religious mysticism. The French
cleric Malebranche welcomed this conclusion. The ph3^ical
world, he suggested, is but a myth, all our experience proceed-
ing in God, who is the sole agent and ceaseless creator of all
that is. This idealistic mysticism was later developed by
Berkeley.

But two continental thinkers, Spinoza and Leibniz, made
valiant attempts to modify the Cartesian system in such a way
as to meet this matter-mind problem without sacrifice of the
Cartesian faith in science. Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) at-
tempted a solution by means of the concept of an absolute
correspondence or parallelism between physical and mental
processes. To every mental condition, he supposed, there cor-
responds a physical condition; and vice versa. Our will to move
and our bodily motion are not cause and effect, but two aspects
of one and the same concrete event. Similarly, every sensation
is the mental aspect of some bodily condition. The real world,
in short, is everywhere at once mental and physical, just as a
box must have an inside and an outside, or a curved line a
convex side and a concave side. Matter and mind are not two
substances; they are two most basic properties of one and the
same substance.

This conception of psychophysical parallelism has proved
useful, even indispensable, in human psychology; and we can-
not doubt that it expresses a biological fact. Also, it suggests
a more general conception which is intellectually emancipating.

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 259

man would regenerate society and establish it on a firm basis;
but he nowhere rationally established even this assumption. So
Spinoza wrote his Ethics, a treatise of rational morality and
rational religion.

We possess today a considerable body of theoretical science,
the authority of which is seldom seriously questioned; but after
three centuries of theoretical research, we have still no au-
thoritative science of ethics. Kant, who was the profoundest
student of this problem, concluded there can be none, because
freedom and authority are reciprocally exclusive. But Spinoza
did not doubt the possibility of a rational ethical theory. His
faith was due in part to his need, which would not be denied.
He was the son of a Jewish family, driven from Spain to Hol-
land by the persecutions of the Inquisition. In Holland, his in-
tellectual audacity brought him into collision with orthodox
Jewry, which excommunicated him from the synagogue.
Spinoza needed a rational religion, one that would leave him
intellectually free, yet unite him with his fellows despite all
differences of confession and race. He became the first modern
exponent of a liberal religion which would carry into creative
faith the intellectual powers active and creative in science. He
had a second ground of faith. Although Spinoza subscribed to
the Cartesian science, he was not only nor even pr imar ily a
Cartesian. In his youth he had steeped himself in Jewish and
other scholastic theology, and he never renounced certain large
tenets of scholastic doctrine. The Puritan conception which
allows to nature no intrinsic value, but sees in it only a physical
mechanism created to serve man’s moral purpose, never found
lodgment in the mind of Spinoza. Nature was for him what it
was for the Stoics, the material expression of universal and
divine Being. Both metaphysically and morally, Spinoza is a
modem Stoic, one who adapts the Stoic concept of nature to
the supposed requirements of modem science. The main out-
line of his metaphysics is as follows: There is but one Sub-
stance, mfinite in extent and variety, but absolute in its unity.

THE RATIONALISTIC PaiLOSOPHY OF MODERN SOENCE z6l

pendent substance, in some degree effecting its own mental
processes, and therewith its physical processes. And in fact,
Spinoza assumes much more than this bare choice. To choose
the rational life, he says, is to resist the passions, temptations,
and feelings induced in us by our immediate environment,
which compel us to pursue pleasure, fame, position, wealth,
and other “worldly” goods. To live rationally is to live wholly
in and for an “intellectual love of God,” i.e. a rational under-
standing of ourselves as mere items in the universal Substance.
Spinoza implies that the individual is free to determine his
life, and that he will find his true good in an intelligent and
voluntary participation in a universal divine Process.

We may accept the ethical purpose of Spinoza, which was
to establish a rational and intelligent moral science, without
being disturbed by the metaphysical inconsistencies of his
ethical theory. In the same way we may accept his call to an
independent and intelligent religious faith without identifying
ourselves with his specific conclusions, which were determined
by his faulty interpretation of science. Spinoza was adamandy
opposed to all revealed religion, with its appeal to past au-
thority, its dogmatic per^cution of heresies, and its anthropo-
morphism. The only true God, he taught, is that eternal, im-
mutable, univereal Substance, which, wholly unlike our human
selves, is omnipotent and infinite, yet accessible to our rational
intuition. Spinoza’s criticism of biblical sources initiated a new
era of critical and scientific religious study, and was the im-
portant forerunner of the critic^ historical science of today.
He widened the religious oudook of his age; and his work
should have initiated a creative movement, reaching new re-
ligious truth by applying to religion the faculties developed by
a free and observant science. His achievement remains great,
therefore, after we discount his ethical and religious teaching
as too rationalistic and intellectual, too solitary and aloof, too
unrelated to emotional and social actualities.

The chief philosophical influence of Spinoza, over and above

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MCHJEBN SCIENCE 263

The fact was that philosophers had now to reconcile, and
if possible to synthesize, two important but quite different in-
tellectual traditions, developing quite distinct concepts of na-
ture and knowledge. One was the Greek and medieval tradi-
tion, which drew, so to speak, a horizontal line through nature,
dividing every natural thing into a more lowly matter striving
upwards toward its true form, and a transcendental form con-
descending to this lowly matter. The other tradition was this
newer Cartesian conception,, which drew a vertical line divid-
ing physical reality off from another reality called “mind.”
Since this physical reality was also usually called “matter,” it
was mistakenly given many of the properties of the Greek
matter; and this led to all sorts of confusion and ambiguity.
No one tried more brilliantly, or more desperately, to make
sense of this confusion of Greek and Cartesian metaphysics
than the German philosopher Leibniz.

Gottfried Willxlm Leibniz (1646-1716) was, like Descartes,
a mathematical genius; and, again like Descartes, he wished to
conceive of nature in such a way as to make it wholly con-
formable to mathematical thory. Descartes, the inventor of
analytical geometry, had conceived nature to be wholly fluid
and continuous, to be just geometrical motion. Leibniz was the
inventor of the infinitesimal calculus, a rather paradoxical
theory which requires us to conceive of any finite quantity as
being composed of an infinite number of infinitesimally small
quantities. The application of this theory requires a concep-
tion of nature just the opposite of that of Descartes. Descartes
had to suppose that every apparently solid and discrete body is
really mobile, fluid, and continuous with its context, its ap-
parent solidity and ILxity being due to the constant pattern of
its motion. Leibniz, on the contrary, had to conceive every
apparent continuity in nature, e.g. a line, or path of motion,
to be made up of those discrete infinitesimals which compose,
when there are infinitely enough of them, finite and visible
things.

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 265

It was Descartes who first taught, in modem times, that our
ordinary experience is only a confused version of our clear
radonal intuition of true being. Spinoza, thereupon, supposed
that animals and other subhuman beings are possessed of an even
lower and more confused mentality. Leibniz similarly supposes
that the extended physical world arises from our confused
vision of myriads of nonextended monads which to a perfect
vision would be separately and individually known. But the
uniformity or natural law which characterizes this extended
and illusory physical world is not altogether an illusion. It
represents the true character of the constituent monads, which
were created by God in such manner as to exhibit, when con-
fusedly seen, these real uniformities instituted by God.

The monads, Leibtdz taught, are purely spiritual, in-
destructible, self-determinate beings. Each monad, from the
beginning to the end of time, exhibits only its own successive
states, in the order determined by God at its creation. You
and I are such monads, temporarily attached to myriad other
monads constituting our bodies. Our experience did not begin
with our birth, it began with the creation; and it will continue,
after death has dissolved our bodies, to the end of time. Since
each monad is wholly self-determined, there is no real interac-
tion anywhere. When you see me, I am really here; but your
perception of me is not due to my presence, it was instituted
in you, and ordained to appear at this time, by God at the
creadon; and it was then also ordained that I should really be
here at the time you see me, so that your perception, although
wholly subjective, is nevertheless objectively true. Leibniz is
an Occasionalist in this demal of real causation in nature; but
it is to the original creation, and not to the present intermedia-
tion of God, that he looks for the explanation of all apparent
causation.

This doctrine gets impossibly involved. First, we must sup-
pose that a monad really sees other monads, but sees them only
confusedly as extended objects, much as separate points are

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MITOERN SOENCE

267

an organic whole “ideally” controlled by the Supreme Monad
which is God, Presumably this Monad, which ideally controls
all other monads, is another Person than that which actually
created all monads whatsoever, including Himself.

The curious, intricate, elusive, and ultimately unthinkable
system of Leibniz was the work of a man whose mathematical
genius took him into a game with manipulable symbols. These
can be thrown at will into all sorts of symbolic patterns; and
the problem is then to give to the symbols descriptive meanings.
The relationship of these patterns to observable fact may be
remote or nonexistent; yet they can be defined with mathemati-
cal precision, Leibniz is the rednctio ad abmrdum of the ra-
tionalistic dogma, revived by Descartes, that the clarity and
distinctness of ideas, i.e. their logical manipulability, is their
truth. Yet Leibniz applied this faculty of free mathematical
invention to very red problems, for example to the problem
of freedom in a physically necessitated world, and to the prob-
lem — if it be another and not the same problem — of the rela-
tion of particular fact to general hypothesis. His conclusion
was that freedom and individuality or particularity are real
and ultimate, but that natural law and generality are also real
in a certain sense, because God so created free individuals that
they would seem to behave according to general principles.
This conclusion probably amounts to the admission that free-
dom and individuality are not to be intelligibly reconciled with
the concept of naturd necessity, but must be affirmed by an act
of religious faith.

Leibniz was the greatest logician since Aristotle and prior
to Bertrand Russell; and he was the originator of the move-
ment which led to modem logic. His fertile logicd imagina-
tion generated severd ideas which have had profitable applica-
tions in science. One of these, already mentioned, was lus idea
of organic relationship. Another was his notion that space and
time, at least in their mathematical formulations, are relationd
orders of things and not the absolute media which Newton

THE RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 269

sized mathematical principles, their different mathematical sys-
tems pointing to very opposite concepts of “reality.” Spinoza,
less bound by physical science, cultivated a “rational intuition”
which apparently, if we may judge by its very different results
in different thinkers, allows one to intuit any sort of “absolute
reality” one happens to prefer. It is clear, perhaps, that this
rationalistic philosophy is cognitively irresponsible. We know
today that mathematical theories can be made to order, in such
a way as to define any sort of material we may imagine; and
this means that mathematical theory, in and by itself, is no
indication of the sort of world we actually inhabit. But a free
“rational intuition” of Spinoza’s sort is even more irresponsible.
It does not even conform to strict logic, as does mathematical
theory.

Notice, once more, how this modem rationalism differs from
the Greek and medieval rationalism! Plato also supposed that
true knowledge arises from self-evident principles given to the
reason, and that these rational principles define the eternal and
universal structure which is discovered by science in the world.
But the Greek rationalism did not identify this “reality” with
existent nature, as does modem rationalism. It identified “real-
ity” with the form of nature; but it also postulated a material
element which is the source of accident, defect, and particular-
ity in nature. Modem rationalism renounces this dualism of
form and matter — it takes existent reality to be pure form, and
holds that what is not pure form arises as a subjective illusion,
due to confusion in the mind.

It is evident that this rationalistic doctrine assumes, but with-
out admitting it, the cooperation of the senses in natural knowl-
edge. Knowledge of universal principles would tell us nothing
about tMs world, which is a consensus of particular fact. Only
the senses can reveal the particular configuration of nature at
any place and time. Geometry could not tell us that there exists
a sun with just so many planets, or that Jupiter has four moons,
or that you were bom and now exist. Leibniz was aware of this

THE RAUONALISnC PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 27 1

3. Luce, A. A., Berkeley and Malebranche. London and New

York, Oxford University Press, 1934.

4. Wild, J., Spinoza: Selections. New York, Charles Scribner’s

Sons, 1930.

5. Spinoza, B., Ethics. New York, E. P. Dutton and Company,

Everyman’s edition, 1911. Also other translations.

6. Broad, C. D,, five Types of Ethical Theory. London and New

York, Cambridge University Press, 1934.

7. McKeon, R. The Philosophy of Spinoza. Boston, Longmans,

Green and Company, 1928.

8. Wolfson, H. A., The Philosophy of Spinoza. Cambridge,

Harvard University Press, 1934.

• 9. Wolfson, A., Spinoza. New York, Modem Classics, Inc., 1932.

10. Roth, L., Spinoza. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1929.
There are also studies of Spinoza by Gunn, Caird, Martineau,

Joachim, PoUock, and Duff.

11. Leibniz, G. W., Philosophical Works, trans. Duncan. New

Haven, The Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor Company, 1890.

12. Langley, A. G., The New Essays. La Salle, 111 ., The Open

Court Publishii^ Company, 1896.

13. Latta, R., The Monadology, etc. London and New York, The

Oxford University Press, 1925.

14. Montgomery, G. R., The Correspondence of Leibniz. La Salle,

111 ., The Open Court Publishing Company, 1902, 1918.

15. Rhys, E., ed., Leibnis^ Philosophical Writings. New York, E.

P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1934.

16. Carr, H. W., Leibniz. London and New York, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1929.

17. The Monadology of Leibniz. Los Angeles, University

of Southern California, 1930.

18. Merz, J. Y., Leibniz. Edinburgh, Philosophical Classics for Eng-

lish Readers, 1886.

19. Russell, B,, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz.

New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900, 1937.

20. L6vy-Bruhl, L., A History of Modem Philosophy in France.
La SaUe, 111 ., The Open Court Publishing Company, 1899.

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 2^3

empirical in its establishment of universal principles such as that
of gravitation, which had to be reached by observation and ex-
perimental hypothesis. It is not self-evident that bodies must
attract each other according to just this formula. Reason alone,
it follows, does not tell us what sort of a world this is. The
nature of nature awaits discovery. Science must continually
construct new hypotheses, and retain these only so long as they
meet the observable facts.

The principles of rationalistic philosophy can be stated fairly
simply. The principles of empiricism are more difficult to ex-
pound, because their final implications are obscure and perhaps
inexhaustible. How, for example, shall we explain the fact that
theoretical science, although it willingly subjects its special
hypotheses to factual confirmation or disproof, still assumes
that some general theory must meet all of the facts? Empirical
science still seems to rely upon the self-evident principles of
logic, assuring the success of theoretical analysis. The early
nominalists, who were the forerunners of empirical philosophy,
too easily disposed of this difficulty. Reality is made up of indi-
vidual and unique things, they said; and theories are merely
verbal or mental constructions. We will find that this is by no
means the whole truth. Scientific theories are indeed composed
of words or ideas in our minds; but if we are to distinguish
between a true theory and a false theory, we must suppose that
the true theory indicates, and the false theory fails to indicate,
a real pattern in the real world, and not merely a pattern in
our minds.

Francis Bacon, who instructed his readers to look only to
nature for their knowledge, inclined to this nominalistic view;
but he cannot be said to have presented an intelligible theory
of knowledge. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), whose politick
philosophy we have already noticed, served Bacon as a sort of
secretary in the old minister’s declining years. Hobbes explicitly
subscribed to nominalism in his analysis of cognition; but his
materialistic philosophy implies a rationalistic theory of knowl-

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 275

him to avoid the difficulties of the Cartesian dualism and to
understand mental processes as manifestations of causal inter-
action proceeding between the human organism and its natural
environment. Mental process, Hobbes supposed, is only phya-
cal process of a special and complicated sort. Psychology ought
therefore to pattern itself upon physics. Just as physical science
divides into geometry and mechanics — ^the first defining the
static structure of matter and the second describing the inter-
active processes of matter — so psychology will divide itself
into two studies, one discovering the permanent principles of
human behavior and the other describing the temporal proc-
esses of human life. This may sound very empirical and scien-
tific, but its analogy between physical dynamics and a psychol-
ogy of human purpose betrays an irremediable confusion of
mind. This confusion becomes apparent when Hobbes identifies
the two divisions of psychology respectively with ethics and
politics. Hobbes here confused an empirical psychology, which
would seek a general statement of how men do in fact behave,
with a normative moral code prescribing how men should
behave. Hobbes was betrayed by his unconscious rationalism.
Because he believed that there are absolute mechanical prin-
ciples to which everything must of necessity conform, he could
conclude that there are absolute rational principles to which all
human beings must of necessity conform; and so he inevitably
came to confuse moral principles, which tell us how man ought
to behave, with scientific axioms telling us how men must
behave. Ever since Hobbes, materialism with its confusion of
moral and descriptive principles has hindered the scientific
study of man and society, and endangered freedom.

Hobbes did not know, we conclude, what constitutes em-
pirical science, in spite of the fact that his fresh and often dis-
cerning study of man helped to inaugurate an empirical psy-
chology and sociology. Yet when he turned to a toect study
of human knowledge, he committed himself very definitely
to the principle, out of which issues fina lly a true empiric^

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 277

prepossession, are pseudoconcepts, or meaningless words of
this sort.

Hobbes’ materialism and the political absolutism which de-
rived from his materialistic principles seem to have exerted
considerable influence on the continent of Europe. In Britain
his materialistic rationalism and his political absolutism found
little response. This was not the case with his psychology and
his nominalistic theory of knowledge, which had important
consequences. These studies revived the critical attitude of the
medieval nominalists who had opposed the scholastic rational-
ism; and they initiated modem critical philosophy, which un-
dertakes a critical analysis, and reaches a very cautious estimate,
of the validity and scope of theoretical knowledge. Chiefly
through Hobbes there came to be developed that subjectivistic
and introspective sort of psychology which studies mental con-
tents in isolation from their physiological and external condi-
tions, Recent psychology has largely freed itself from this sub-
jectivistic and sterile tradition. In philosophy, however,
Hobbes’ subjectivistic analysis of mind has continued to char-
acterize an introspective “epistemology,” which narrows and
defeats philosophical speculation. But Hobbes, in spite of his
faulty psychology and his absolutistic premises, was never-
theless an important channel through which the critical philos-
ophy of the later Middle Ages came down the centuries to our-
selves.

This critical philosophy was primarily directed against ra-
tionalist tradition. Its positive purpose, however, was the
defense of an empirical science basing its conclusions wholly
upon observable fact. Johm Locke (1632—1704) is generally
and with reason regarded as the chief founder of modem em-
pirical philosophy. We have already noticed Locke’s political
theory, which still provides the theoretical basis of modem
democratic government. We should see in Locke’s general
philosophy, published in 1691 in the famous Essay Concermng

the EMPiraCAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 279

conformity to some known and supposedly indubitable prin-
ciple the test of the truth of a new hypothesis. Locke is excus-
ably vague, and sometimes mistaken, concerning just how new
truth is obtained.

His Essay opens with a critique of dogmatism and rational-
ism. In his political writings he had attacked the concept of
divine monarchical right, because this was the most powerful
and widespread of the dogmas which prevented individual
assumption of the responsibility of self-government. He now
attacks all dogma, and indicts the dogmatic habit of mind itself.
There are, he says, no “innate ideas.” He means that there are
no principles wHch are innate to the mind, prior to experience,
or which need no confirmation by experience. All ideas and all
knowledge derive from experience, our surest ideas being those
which experience most widely confirms. What rationalistic
science takes to be infallible and self-evident principles, he
says, are in fact only nommal definitions^ prescribing certain
fifties of meaning and conventional use. They do not amount
to real definitions, defining once and for all the ultimate natures
of things. Such real definition, Locke implies, is beyond our
powers. Our knowledge of things is partial, tentative, progres-
sive, never final nor definitive. Locke was a lifelong student of
science; he practiced medicine, cultivated the friendship of
leading scientists, and kept abreast of scientific invention. He
did not confine himself to an appreciation of mathematical
physics. He conceived science to be discovery — not a set of
theoretical principles, but the inexhaustible generator of
theories and principles.

Negative in its denial of self-evident truth, positive in its
aflGrmation of the creative and exploratory power of science,
Locke’s view is negative again in its denial of universal knowl-
edge, i.e. knowledge of the universe in its totality. He was
driven to his study of cognition, he writes, by his perception
of the fruitlessness of current metaphysical discussions, in
which philosophers threw at one ano±er different conceptions

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 28 1

sensory evidence and theoretical hypothesis; but in fact he
denied it, by relegating all that is not rationally formulated to a
limbo of sense-illusion. The distinction between what is per-
ceived and what is conceived lies within science itself. Science
includes both clear and explicit theory and the inchoate evi-
dence which is organized by means of theory. We owe to the
empirical philosophers the insight that science is the concrete
but intelligent apprehension of particular fact, ue. of nature
itself as it observably exists. What the empiricists failed to
make clear was the relation between these two elements, the
formulated theory and the particular observable facts. Some-
how the particularized evidence at once distinguishes itself
from the general theory, and supports the general theory. But
how?

Locke took refuge in the oversimple distinction between
primary and secondary qualities, in order to explain the
scientist’s transmutation of sensed particular fact into scientific
knowledge. Nature, he assumed, is a collection of real things or
substances, each of which has its real and intrinsic properties.
Some of these properties enter into experience unchanged; and
in regard to these, our perception is truthful and scientific.
But many of the characters of perception are not truthful.
They are the effects in us of the actual properties of the thing;
and these effects may little resemble their external causes.
Locke’s suggestion is that science should discover the true
natures of things by discerning and reflecting upon the p rimar y
properties. (This suggestion is revived in a corrected form in
the “critical realism” of today. But Locke’s main conception,
which states knowledge to arise as the result of a process of
comparison, abstraction, and recombination effected upon the
materials of sensation, points in a very different direction, lead-
ing to modern idealism.) Locke does not, as a matter of fact,
provide a single consistent description of cognitive process.
Sometimes he is a realist, and holds knowledge to be at least in
some degree identical with the substances which it describes;

the empirical philosophy of modern SaENCE 283

insisring that truth is the correspondence of idea with fact, he
seems to be saying that knowledge is a perception of agreement
or disagreement among ideas. Only very cursorily does he now
discuss “the agreement of ideas with real existence.” These
later chapters might have been written by a rationalistic fol-
lower of Descartes. Yet Locke may not have meant to say that
the axioms of mathematics and the generative principles of
morality are innate and self-evident truths, established by pure
reason. In attributing absoluteness or certainty to these axioms
and principles, he may have meant only that they are the
widest, most certain, and best attested deliverances of experi-
ence, confirmed by all observation. In spite of many requests
that he should do so, it might be added, Locke was never able
to present the set of principles basic to a “moral science”
parallehng mathematics. He felt, perhaps, that these absolute
moral principles were implicit in his political theory. If so, they
would comprise an affiimation of the moral, self-responsible,
and essentially virtuous character of individual man.

Locke’s limitations were also his strength. He was a man of
incomparable “common sense,” able to state philosophical con-
victions in language intelligible and convincing to the reader
untrained in philosophy. At the same time, he had an intellec-
tual shrewdness and a superlative honesty which led him to
the heart of a problem, and which usually saved him, much as
he wished to save others, from losing his feet among words and
ideas. His intellectual modesty, moreover, relieved him from
the necessity of elaborating a completed philosophy, meeting
and resolving all of the problems which he himself raised.
Locke did not see these problems as clearly as Hume and Kant
would later see them. He conceived of the pursuit of knowl-
edge as a campaign which is to be tactically advanced on many
fronts, and which neither requires nor allows a global strategy.
He did not believe, we noted, in the possibility of a universal,
comprehensive study of fact. Yet his very limitations allowed
him to establish, more securely than his predecessors had done.

rHE EMPnUCAL PHILOSOPHY OP MODERN SCIENCE iSj

be removed, it had to be elaborated into a system making clear
its whole implication. This was done by George Berkeley,
writing not long after the publication of the Essay.

George Berkeley (1683-1753), a student preparing for the
minis try at Dublin University, was one of those who were
entranced by this “new way of ideas.” If knowledge is wholly
derived from mental impressions or ideas, young Berkeley pon-
dered, how can the knowledge thus obtained discover to us
anything peculiarly nonmental, material, and inert? In a bril-
liant psychological study, Berkeley showed that many of the
experienced characters which we unhesitatingly ascribe to
material nature are really the action or eifect of sensory activi-
ties proceeding in the organism. Everything that is directly
perceived, he concluded, is conditioned by the nature of the
percipient organism, i.e. by our own nature. Berkeley realized
that this conclusion was pregnant with philosophical conse-
quences; and very soon, while still in his twenty-second year,
he published The Principles of Human Krumledge, destined to
become another of the classical texts of modem philosophy.
His thesis is that of idealism. A reality that is perceived and
known by mind, he argues, must itself be of a mental character,
related to that which apprehends it. If reality were completely
nonmental, wholly unlike and unrelated to our minds, there
could be no real connection between nature and mind, and
knowledge would be impossible.

The conscious human organism or mind, Berkeley con-
cludes, enters as a factor into every sense-perception; and if
perception is the material source of tmth, this mental character
will consequently qualify all that "v^^e know. The world that we
know, he continues, is constitutively determined in all of its
character by the fact that it is perceived, i.e. by its relation to
the perceiving mind. We may not therefore accept a science
which ostensibly defines nature, but which does not acknowl-
edge this mental character qualifying aU our immediate experi-
ence of nature. If the mental character of “being-perceived”

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 287

Berkeley establishes his conclusion that all reality is mental?
He used his mentalism, indeed, to discredit the materialistic
doctrine which teaches that external reality is really composed
of unconscious material atoms, moving according to the laws
of mechanics. This mechanistic science may explain how physi-
cal things interact with and upon each other; but it does not
yet explain how things act upon our minded selves, producing
mental effects in conscious organisms. The causal coimection,
Berkeley might have said, presupposes some deep sort of con-
tinuity, likeness, or even identity between what is cause and
what is effect, ue. between the external world and its effects in
conscious perception.

It should be recognized that this idealistic argument is still
possessed of force. That there is causal interaction between
the living organism and its external environment most of us
will readily admit; but we do not always admit that the exist-
ence of this causal process requires us to explain the external
world in terms of its interaction with animals and men, as well
as in terms of its inorganic interactions. The cognitive response
of man to nature implies something with respect to nature.
We must also explain the living organism in terms of its inter-
actions with the external world; and this duly leads us to a
biochemistry and even a psychophysics; but this latter implica-
tion Berkeley did not or would not see. His purpose was to
make a frontal attack upon materialism of the Hobbesian sort,
which, when taken alone, he quite properly saw, invalidates all
moral, religious, and intellectual truth, fails to explain our
immediate perception of natural quality, and finally makes un-
intelligible the distinction between living and nonliving things.
Both materialism and idealism, we may conclude, are partial
truths. The materialist wishes to recognize only such causal
relations as connect inorganic substances, ignormg the relations
between conscious organisms and their environment; the
idealist, on the contrary, recognizes only this latter sort of
relation, and neglects the causal processes discovered in inor-

the empirical philosophy of modern science 289

called “universal form” — ^is apprehended by the intellect or
reason. The medieval mysticism which sought an immediate,
even a sensory, apprehension of divine and ultimate Being
consequently involved a new evaluation and a rehabilitation of
particular fact, which Greek science and philosophy had be-
litded and neglected. Both assumptions — ^that we know par-
ticular character only through the senses and general character
only through the intellect — ^may be mistaken. The writer be-
lieves them to be so. But they are still widely and unhesitat-
ingly affirmed; and they help to reveal to us certain aesthetic,
moral, and religious motives which have advanced the develop-
ment of empirical science and philosophy in the modem age.

Many of Berkeley’s subsidiary arguments, applying or sup-
porting his idealistic thesis, are acute and have been confirmed
by later thought. For example, he rejects the distinction, at
least as it was then made, between primary and secondary
qualities. We cannot separate out of our experience, he points
out, certain perceived characters which persist unchanged -by
our perception of them, to leave aside those which are trans-
formed by the process of perception. Every perceived char-
acter whatsoever, he shows, is subjectively conditioned — size
and shape just as much as color or warmth. In the sense of
being subjectively conditioned, therefore, all perceived char-
acters are secondary; and it is further clear that all of those
characters which had been elevated as primary and absolutely
truthful, such as size and shape, are known to us only by way
of the so-called secondary characters. A world without color,
without light and shade, and without tactile quality would
present no sensible sizes or shapes, but would fuse into inarticu-
late unity. Berkeley, however, would call all qualities primary,
rather than secondary, because he holds that in spite of their
being conditioned by the percipient organism, they are the real
and ultimate qualities of the world. Today, the cogency of
Berkeley’s criticism of primary qualities is fairly generally
conceded. All perceived characters, it is usually ^owed, are

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE

291

rialism; and if we are to allow that idealism is an intelligible
doctrine, we must allow realistic truth to concepts and renounce
the nominalistic position.

We have now seen several sorts of idealism, and it is im-
portant' to distinguish them. First, we met Greek idealism,
which did not deny but emphatically affirmed the reality of
matter of a certain sort. Greek idealism was dualistic, it ex-
plained each existent thing as a compound of matter and form.
It was idealistic in the sense that it attributed to the forms
which invest things a high or “ideal” beauty, a supreme right-
ness and significance — ^not that it conceived things, or even
forms, to be peculiarly mental or immaterial in the modem
sense. Modem idealism, unlike the Greek, is monistic; it
denies the reality of matter, and attributes reality only to
mind. Modem idealism has two forms. Rationalistic or Leib-
nizian idealism defines the mind in terms of its intellectual
processes and its conceptual knowledge; and it consequently
conceives reality to be some totality of intellectual process.
Perceptual or Berkeleian idealism defines the mind as a pano-
rama of sensory experience; and it consequently conceives the
universe to be a larger expanse of such experience. Both con-
ceptions are difiicult, vague, and ultimately unthinkable. Their
value is to remind us that the conscious intellectual and per-
ceptual processes of man really exist. These processes cannot be
argued out of court; and they make unacceptable any concep-
tion of nature which leaves them inexplicable or unaccounted
for. Man, and all that he is, is part of nature, and a clue to
nature. But simply to define nature as a larger replica of psy-
chological process seems rather futile, not to say puerile.
Plato, whatever his inadequacies, was more mature in his per-
ception of the problem and in his dualisdc solution of it.

We noticed that Berkeley’s idealistic metaphysics, with its
acknowledgment of a “notion” of mind and universal being,
required a departure from his nominalistic theory of knowl-
edge, An early Common-Place Book in which the young

the empirical philosophy of modern science 293

2, Laird, J., Hobbes. London and New York, Oxford University-

Press, 1934.

3, Taylor, A. E., Hobbes. New York, Dodge Publishing Com-

pany, 1908.

4. Robertson, G. C., Hobbes. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons,

1 886,

F* J, E. Woodbridge, M. W. Calkins, G. Kennedy, P. Wheeling,
and others have edited selections from Hobbes,

5. Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New

York, E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1901,

6* The Essay ^ ed. A. C. Fraser. London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1901.

7. Lamprecht, S. P., Locke: Selections. New York, Columbia Uni-

versity Press, 1928.

8. Calkins, M. W., Lockers Essay: Selections. La Salle, 111 ., The

Open Court Publishing Company, 1905, 1920.

9. Morris, C. R., Locke^ Berkeley, and Hume. London and New

York, Oxford University Press, 1931.

10. Alexander, S-, Locke. New York, Dodge Publishing Company,

1908,

1 1. Green, T. H., Introduction to Hume's Treatise. Several editions.

12. Fowler, Th., Locke. New York, The Macmillan Company,

1906,

13. Fraser, A, C., Locke. London and New York, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1890, 1901.

14. Gibson, J., Lockers Theory of Knowledge. New York, The

Macmillan Company, 1917.

15. Berkeley, G., Works, ed. A. C Fraser. London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1871.

16. Calkins, M. W., Berkeley: Selections. New York, Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1929.

17. Fraser, A. C., Berkeley. London and New York, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1899.

18. Hicks, G. D., Berkeley. London, Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1932.

19. Johnston, G. A,, The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy.

New York, The Macmillan Company, 1923.

20. Wild, J., George Berkeley. London and New York, Oxford

University Press, 1936.

the EZVIPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 295

as a pioneer of psychological and social science that Hume is
chiefly remembered and most assured of immortality. He is
remembered as the destroyer of that rationalistic tradition,
which ever since the time of Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle
had wet-nursed the human intellect. It was a tradition which
still constrained thought when Hume wrote, and which even
today from certain strongholds seeks to assert its dominion.
But because of Hume the iconoclast, a dogmatic rationalism
can scarcely reign again. So soon as it asserts itself openly, it is
met by the stem gaze and the unanswerable question of Hume,
and it retires defeated. This is not to say that Hume rid us
completely of dogmatism — there is still plenty of that in the
world; but dogmatism exists henceforth by inadvertence, in
disguise, or armed with bratal force.

Dissatisfied with life as a shipping clerk, David Hume took
his small competence to La Fleche, the little French town
where Descartes had been educated; and there, after three
years, still a young man in his middle twenties, he completed
his first and greatest work, the Treatise on Human Nature.
Note its title, and also its subtitle, which reads: an Attempt
to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral
Subjects. We would not regard this book, today, as being
primarily a study of human nature; we would discover in it no
experiments; and we would say that only its less important
chapters treat of morals. Its more important parts treat of
causal relationship, a concept basic to every study of nature.
By the “experimental method of reasoning” Hume meant, if
we may judge him by his work, a science not committed to
rationalistic prepossessions; and under “Moral Subjects” he
included the whole range of human activity.

There is no doubt that Hume’s initial purpose was to extend
to the field of human behavior the sort of analysis so magnifi-
cently applied by Newton to the field of physical nature.
Newton seemed to have shown that all material change is
explicable in terms of atomic particles, interacting according

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE

297

diinks of knowledge as a pattern of ideas which is centered in
a perceptual nucleus actually present, but supplemented by
ideas recalled from memory. His purpose is to show how such
recall occurs, and what sorts of conceptual knowledge it. gen-
erates.

It seems clear that we do call to mind from memory those
ideas which are similar to the ideas now present to us. Our
most basic and initial thought process is recognition, whereby
present perception is supplemented by memory, i.e. by recalled
earlier perception. Evidently there is among ideas this relation
or associative bond of similarity, over and above the association
of contiguity described above. Ideas are associated, Hume says,
by contiguity and by resemblance. Thus an idea present in per-
ception may call to mind a similar idea, earlier perceived; and
thk earlier idea may bring along with it other ideas, contiguous
with it in the earlier perception- You see Brown, you recognize
him because your present perception is associated by resem-
blance with your earlier perceptions of him, and you are now
reminded of Brown’s dog which has usually accompanied him.

This is the simple sort of analysis, known as associational
psychology, by means of which Hume proposed to explain
every mental process, and to develop the empirical doctrine
which states that knowledge comes wholly from experience. It
is generally considered today, among psychologists, to be
faulty in its introspective method and inadequate in its con-
stitutive hypothesis, although the facts of recall, which Hume
explained as the result of “associations,” are evident enough.
Contemporary empirical psychology either avoids introspec-
tion altogether, or supplements it by a behavioristic study
which places mental processes in the context of their bodily
conditions and the external environment. Although Hume’s
analysis undoubtedly assisted the progress of psychological
science, it did this by elaborating an introspective psychology
which finally made apparent its limitations and its nonempirical
character.

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCSENCE 299

psychological terms, became something else than psychology.
The name “epistemology” has been used to designate this type
of smdy, which seeks to understand the relations which hold
between conceptual knowledge, immediate perception, and
their objects. The chief philosophical value of Hume’s psycho-
logical analysis lay in its concept of association, which allowed
him to appreciate certain important relations among ideas—
or among things — ^which had hitherto been neglected.

The concept of association of ideas, like most of the other
concepts of Hume’s psychology, came to him from Hobbes
and Locke. Both of those thinkers had defined knowledge to
be the result of a correct apprehension of relations among
ideas. They had characterized true knowledge as a perception
of relations intrinsic and proper to ideas, and indicated that
error arises from the chance or contingent association of ideas
in the mind. Thus the idea of triangle, they taught, is intrin-
sically and intuitively related to the ideas of three intersecting
straight lines, of three enclosed angles, etc., and one cannot
entertain the first idea without the others. However, one may
associate the idea of triangle widi a musical instrument of that
shape, or with sandwiches which are often triangularly cut;
and such associations are due merely to personal experience,
and reveal nothing of the constitutive nature of triangles, musi-
cal instruments, or sandwiches. Hume’s predecessors did not
perceive — as some of his successors have not perceived — that
in justifying the first sort of relationship as real and in defining
the second sort, the associations, as the source of error, they
were reestablishing philosophical rationalism, in spite of their
philosophical conviction that knowledge comes only from
experience. It was Hume’s genius to perceive the significance
for our knowledge of nature of these chance or contingent
associations. He had the intellectual audacity to make these
associations, and not the “rational intuition” of “intrinsic and
necessary relations,” the source and substance of natural knowl-
edge. The whole of our natural knowledge, he taught, is only

the empirical philosophy of modern science 301

describes things less and less in terms of their visible appear-
ances, and more and more by inference from their causal ac-
tions and reactions. But what is causal action? Rationalism
had consistently confused the concept of causation with the
concept of substance, by supposing that the action of a thing
is wholly due to the substantial nature of that thing. Rational
insight into substances was accordingly supposed to carry with
it a rational insight into causal necessities within nature. Hume
perceived that in the new science, causal connection meant
particular interaction among particular things, although the
same sort of causal connection may recur again and again.
What can we mean, he asks, by causal connection? Can we
discover any necessary coimection, i.e. any rationally intuited
relation, between a cause and its effect? He finds none; but
he has a very simple explanation of causal connection in terms
of associations. When A has been followed sufficiently often
by B, he says, the appearance of A will induce in us the ex-
pectation of B. The reason for this expectation is that A and B,
having occurred often contiguously, are now firmly associated
by contiguity. The reoccurrence of A arouses past memories
of A, and these bring with them associated ideas of B, which
we now expect to be realized again in perception along with A.
The character of causal necessity which we impute to nature
is really, it follows, a subjective character, resident in our-
selves. The same sequence, repeated again and again, generates
in us a habit of expectancy, such that the reoccurrence of A
suggests the reoccurrence of B. Thus we come to believe that
A necessitates B, independently of ourselves; and we proceed
to a belief in universal natural necessity. Actually, however,
we neither perceive nor understand any such necessity. So far
as we know, A may recur without B, B may recur without
A, AB may never occur again. We try to establish our faith
in specific causal necessities by appealing to a universal princi-
ple of necessity, which states that every event must have its
cause; but this is arguing in a circle, because we have no

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SCIENCE 3O3

we cannot reduce this relation between cause and effect to
some intuitively known and rationally understood relation, but
must accept it empirically and as we find it, then it follows
that natural knowledge can do no more, in the last resort, than
summarize observable fact.

What are the consequences of Hume’s conclusions concern-
ing natural knowledge? There are two sorts of consequence,
respectively critical and constructive. The critical or destruc-
tive consequences are the surer and the more important. They
might be summed up as a recognition of the contingency of
nature. To acknowledge the contingency of nature means that
we acknowledge the impossibility of deducing the content or
character of nature from anything we know prior to our ob-
servation of nature. We must discover nature by observation
and by study of observable fact, and we may not impose upon
nature our preconception of what nature should be or must
be. Since what we observe is always some particular situation,
natural knowledge will consist of generalizations which sum-
marize particular facts. And since our experience of particular
fact is of necessity limited to what we or others have actually
observed, our generalizations must be asserted modestly, and
not exaggerated into definitions of “absolute reality.” All nat-
ural knowledge is probable knowledge. Its probability may be
very high, practically equivalent to certainty and theoretically
close to certainty; but it cannot reach absolute certainty. For
example, all human experience supports the belief that the
earth will continue to turn on its axis, and that the sun will
again rise tomorrow in the east. But we have no proof that the
earth must continue so to turn; or if we could deduce this ro-
tation from some general mechanical principle, then this
principle in its turn would be indemonstrable and only em-
pirical. Our widest, surest, and most basic knowledge of nature
is still only a generalization from observed particular facts,
and rests upon empirical evidence, i.e. upon observation. Even
the most basic principles of natural science are of this sort; and

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SOENCE 305

dieted and which had to be discovered by observatioiii Yet it
is a very general and perhaps “universal” principle, and not
itself a particular fact. All the principles of natural knowledge,
Hume is saying, are of this sort. The whole of science, in-
cluding its largest principles, is obtained from expefience; and
it is subject, therefore, to change, modification, and growth.

But what of the mathematical principles still incorporated
in the Newtonian science? Are they not still rational, necessary,
and universally applicable? Hume could not show that they are
not; and it is evident that they embarrassed him, because they
seemed to preserve a rational element in natural knowledge
which he could not argue away. He dealt with the difiiculty
in nvo ways. Sometimes he showed that the basic concepts of
mathematics arise, just like any other concepts, as the result
of associations among ideas; and this would imply that mathe-
matical theory is no more absolute than other theory, e.g. physi-
cal theory. At other times, he frankly recognizes that mathe-
matical science arises from absolute rational axioms; but he
assumes now that its principles do not apply perfectly to ob-
servable fact, which is consequently still free to be what it
will. Home’s honesty appears in this equivocal treatment of
mathematics; for we know today that both of his two views,
contradictory though they seem, are correct. A science like
geometry includes two elements: an empirical element which is
really descriptive but only probable, and a rational element
which is certain, but not necessarily descriptive of anything
in nature.

Hume’s general conclusion was, then, that authentic knowl-
edge must be identified with a natural science reaching general-
izations possessed of greater or lesser probability, and that
principles which are supposedly possessed of intuitive cer-
tainty are on that very account suspect, and to be denied
descriptive truth. This conclusion invalidated — ^with some
reservation as regards mathematics — all so-called rational
knowledge. Most emphatically it excluded aU rationalistic

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SQENCE 3O7

should be remembered that Hume’s critical work is not preju-
diced by the failure of Humian epistemology. It is the scientist,
not the philosopher, who establishes the concepts of science.

Hume’s statement of his conclusions was unnecessarily sub-
jectivistic and skeptical. He was satisfied to say that causal
knowledge, and therewith all natural knowledge, consists of
habits of expectancy induced in us by past experience; and
he did not further inquire — ^being prevented by his subjective
psychological approach — ^into the implications of this state-
ment. The statement implies, surely, that mental habits are
effects of the more constant configurations of nature, continu-
ously effective upon us in perception. The relation of knowl-
edge to nature is at least that of effect to cause. This conclusion
meets a difficulty which Kant was to exploit, since it conceives
of a nature lying outside of experience, causing experience —
and how, if all knowledge is derived from experience, should
we know a nature which lies beyond experience? In the writer’s
opinion, the problem is apparent rather than real. The empirical
doctrine states that knowledge is derived from experience; but
it does not exclude the realistic hypothesis that experience is
the direct effect of a reality lying beyond the mind, and that
experience consequently provides clues to the character of that
reality. This hypothesis is a legitimate one, and one that is
confixmed by all experience and analysis.

Hume’s central thesis, that knowledge is the sum of mental
habits induced by past impressions, is so broad and simple that
it would cover animal as well as human psychology. This was
its great value. It indicated certain characters of knowledge
so general and so obvious that they had escaped attention. But
it is also clear that Hume, in establishing the empirical basis
of knowledge in observable fact, neglected the rationalistic
elements which distinguish science from ordinary knowledge
and animal habit. Mathematical reasoning and other sorts of
reasoning which Hume would have called “metaphysical”
have a most important auxiliary function in science. This much

IHE EMPIBICAL PHOOSOPHY OP MODERN SCIENCE 309

his lifetime, might be defended today as only a proper demand
for intellectual independence in the pursuit of religious truth.
With regard to revealed religion, Hume rejected miracles,
along with whatever else cannot be brought into conformity
with observable fact. But Hume’s attitude toward religion is
that of the honest inquirer, not that of the atheist. He opened
the way to an independent and creative study of religious
factj and it is most to be regretted that the later centuries,
which have turned Hume’s empiricism to good use in every
other field, have tended to place religion outside of the intel-
lectual pale, either as a truth too sacrosanct for impartial study
and creative hypothesis, or as an error better left alone. It is
a pusillanimous and ignoble compromise, ultimately destruc-
tive of science and religion both, which has left to each of
these two faiths one half of the mind and a peculiar social
domain.

Of next importance in Hume’s work, after his establishment
of empirical science and method, was his application of this
method to human and social fact. Hume did not follow Locke,
who believed moral principles to be fixed and universal. He
taught that moral knowledge too is derived from experience.
But like many thinkers then and since, Hume did not suffi-
dendy distinguish a psychological analysis of feelings, affec-
tions, and emotions, as motives of human behavior, from moral
theory. “Reason is and ought to be,” he wrote, “the slave of
the passions.” In this revolutionary rejection of all earlier teach-
ing, Hume attacked the divorce of “moral reason” from the
emotional life of man. He recognized quite properly the de-
pendence of action upon feeling, and the instrumental func-
tion of thought ia analyzing and guiding our emotional re-
sponses. But in his moral theory as elsewhere, he did less than
justice to the rational element in man. The source of all moral
distinctions and preferences, he taught, is ultimately the ex-
perience and antidpation of pleasure and pain, these qualities
attending all our states or “ideas.” Hume applied this hedonistic

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SOENCE JII

Hume had ^vea more attentioa to this transition from “nat-
ural” morality to “artificial” justice, and begun his ethical
study with a consideration of government, he would have im-
portantly amplified both his ethical and his political theory.
But when he proceeds to his study of politics, he is once more
the student of the natural growth of social institutions, intent
upon showing how the natural impulses, widened by sympathy
and strengthened by education, sufiice to explain the long de-
velopment of legal and political institutions. He regards the
concept of a social contract, by means of which Locke had
established government upon the natural and inalienable rights
of the individual, as a convenient but rationalistic fiction sym-
bolizing the long development of organized society out of
men’s natural needs and dispositions. He does not seek the
principles which had implicitly determined this development.
Hume left ethics in a confusion which can be removed only
by an analysis superior to any attempted in the past.

Thus there is a positive and a negative side to Hume; and
we should see both sides clearly and estimate them objectively.
The pofidve side is his empiricism and his naturalism. His em-
piricism brought science back to its proper and necessary
starting-point, which is observable particular fact, and cut
down everything which might obstruct science by separating
the scientist from observable facts. What most obstructed
science was the retention, as absolute rational principles, of
“metaphysical” concepts which were after all only the largest
or mcst firmly established principles of Greek and medieval
science. The Newtonian science had already broken away in
some respects from these principles; and Hume, perceiving
this, saw further that no scientific principle should or could
be allow’ed such absolute authority. He quite properly con-
cluded that all scientific principles which describe nature are
but large generalizations from observed particular fact. In his
application of this empirical theory of knowledge Hume be-
comes a naturalist, which is to say that he finds in nature

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SQENCE 3I3

worthily advancing an empirical rationalism, others desperately
relinquishing the empirical insight of Hume and returning to
rationalism; but Hume’s doctrines, too uncritically and liter-
ally taken, have sometimes produced a sort of scientific ob-
scurantism which only inverts the “fundamentalism” of the
religious dogmatist. The earlier rationalism had its most popular
expression in the concept of natural law. There are certain
absolute principles, said the rationalistic philosopher, which
must of necessity be applied in all scientific study, such appli-
cation constituting science. There are certain absolute laws,
said the popular version of this view, which all natural things
must obey, as a result of their inclusion in the cosmos. Hume’s
devastating criticism of rationalism has finally destroyed this
faith in natural law; and there is no doubt that the old concept
of natural law, which conceived material things to be neces-
atated by such laws as that of gravitation, must be replaced
by the insight that material things do m fact, but not by any
observable necessity, conform to scientific formulas. Conse-
quently, it is concluded, there is no law in nature, neither
natural, nor moral, nor of any other sort. Thongs do what they
please, without regard to any universal context or environ-
ment; and it is simply an accident, with no implications of any
kind, that things so conveniently conform in those ways which
science successfully describes. The possibility of science, its
existence and its continuous extension, it is concluded, carry
simply no implications whatsoever regarding nature.

Now this is an error as disastrous to science, and also to
society, as was the earlier dogmatism. Science has not ceased
to be rational in becoming empirical. It still makes demands
upon nature, although these demands have emptied themselves
of all save logical content; and the plasticity of fact to the
demands of logic is still a character of fact, carrying implica-
tions about the world at large. We will not develop this theme
here; but we shall see, in our concluding chapters, that- the
true effect of Hume’s criticism was not so much to invalidate

THE EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SOENCE 3I5

age; for what was Rousseau’s rebellion, which unleashed
hysterical revolution in France, compared with this rebellion
which has challenged and still challenges every intellectual
and social institution that cannot continue to justify its claim
in terms of human experience? When Hume showed that the
bond between cause and effect is no necessary bond, but a
bond primarily of mental habit induced by past experience, and
subject therefore to change in the light of new experience or
experience better encompassed, he did no less than liberate
human thought from human inertia. And in emancipating
thought, he emancipated also action, to free at last the human
race itself. Seldom, only occasionally as in his Dialogues Con-
cerning Natural Religion, does that mighty imagination escape
the rein of firm and even harsh restraint; but when it does,
we realize that Hume liberated human thought in virtue of
his own imaginative vision. He envisioned a nature that is free,
moving, and intent, not to be deprived of its great leaping-
times. It was a mystical adoration of natural freedom, of
liberty in all nature, that moved Hume to cut those intellectual
bonds which had confined the thought of man through earlier
time.

Notes for Further Reading

1. Hume, D., A Treatise on Human Nature, ed. Green and Grose.

London and New York, Longmans, Green and Company,
1874.

2. Works, ed. Green and Grose. London and New York,

Longmans, Green and Company, 1874.

3. A Treatise on Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge. London

and New York, Oxford University Press, 1903.

4. The Engines, ed. Selby-Bigge. Oxford, The Claren-

don Press, 1894.

5. Hendel, C. W., Hume: Selections. New York, Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1927.

6. Green, T. H., “Introduction to Hume,” Treatise on Human

Nature, ed. Green and Grose. London and New York,
Longmans, Green and Company, 1874. A critical study.

17 THE REVIVAL OF

POLITICAL ABSOLUTISM

In the writings of locke, Berkeley, and hume
we see the development of an empirical philosophy
which in its theoretical and practical teachings expresses the
outlook most characteristic of modem man. It is emphatically
a liberal or libertarian philosophy. In its study of science it
elevates particular fact, which is an apprehension of individual
being, into the chief criterion of truth. In its moral and political
teaching, it makes the human individual the source and seat of
authority, and the welfare of individuals die objective of
government.

TThis empirical and democratic development has proceeded
freely and unobstructed chiefly in the English-speaking world,
i.e. in Britain and America. It has not, generally speaking,
characterized the thought and practice of continental Europe.
European thought has remained bound by rationalistic habits
long induced by medieval scholasticism, and never completely
renounced; and European governments have been for the most
part feudal, monarchical, or otherwise absolutistic. The in-
tellectual and political collapse of continental Europe in our
century is the consequence of this failure to advance from ab-

317

THE REVIVAL OF POLIHCAL ABSOLUTISM 3I9

absolutism; and the forms of political absolutism so generated
are many and diverse.

In Britain and America, the movement to democracy was
initiated by the first English revolution, which resisted the
violence done by an absolute monarch to his subjects’ reUgious
convictions; and this first revolution gave to all the later politi-
cal development a religious significance and support. On the
continent of Europe, the revolutionary movement proceeded
under different auspices to a different outcome. The Girtesian
philosophy, in spite of the idealistic efforts of such men as
Spinoza and Leibniz, tended to become a physicalism or ma-
terialism which sees in existent reality only a universal physical
mechanism. The Cartesian concept of natural science was
usually the resource of progressive thinkers who desired to
carry society out of medieval darkness into truth, and to strike
off feudal shackles which were clamped ever more oppressively
upon continental peoples, the more the inadequacy and in-
justice of feudal forms became apparent. In France, the ma-
terialistic tendencies of Cartesianism were further strengthened
as a result of the ecclesiastical support given to the monarchy,
which bought this support by extending protection and privi-
lege to the established clergy. The reform movement became
anticlerical, and from anticlericalism it was easy to proceed to
materialism and atheism. The result was a confusion of pro-
gxesave and religious currents which has defeated political
progress on the continent of Europe from that day to the
present. The struggle between progresave and conservative
factions became extraordinarily bitter, and revolution became
unnecessarily bloody, cruel, and the cause of social vendetta.

At first, the Enlightened intellectuals who led the party of
reform gave some recognition to religious faith. Voltaire,
Helverius, and other liberal thinkers professed Deism, a view
which held God to have created the world, but which rejected
the conception of revealed religion that a divine providence
works in or upon man at all times. According to the Deist,

THE REVIVAL OF POLITICAL ABSOLUTISM

3ZI

beyond the empirical evidence, and in some respects contra-
dicts that evidence. It would seem, for example, that just as
physical theory was importantly modified when it was extended
to cover the analysis of chemical phenomena, so it will again
be modified when it is extended to cover organic and mental
phenomena. A physical science developed to the point where
it could be made to comprehend all fact whatsoever would
explain the phenomena of human morality and religion; and
so comprehensive a science would need to distinguish, and
could not reduce to a common physical level, the activities
of moral man, of sensitive animals, and of ina nimate bodies.

In France, rationalistic thought delivered itself of its absolu-
tistic political implications in the teachings of Jean Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778), whose writings were perhaps the chief
inspiration of the leaders of the French revolution. Rousseau
was an unhappy, neurotic, expatriated Swiss, whose gift of im-
petuous eloquence made him the spokesman of oppressed and
unhappy France. His chief political work, Le Contrat Social,
incited the French people, as later it incited other peoples, to
revolt against their feudal and monarchical forms of govern-
ment. But Rousseau’s book also provided the concept upon
which was established the absolutistic political theory of the
centuries which followed.

The most distinctive feature of Rousseau’s political teaching
is this concept of the general •will, by means of which he in-
tended to reconcile individual freedom with absolute state
power. The political unit should be small enough, he taught,
to allow its citizens to meet together in general assembly, to
participate individually in debate, and to reach their decisions
by majority vote. But what is it in the majority vote that car-
ries authority over aU the members of the community? The
majority vote has this authority, Rousseau says, because it ex-
presses the general 'will. This is the will of the community as
a whole, shared by all citizens including even those who voted
against the measure. The majority vote expresses the “essence”

THE REVIVAL OF POLITICAL ABSOLUTISM 323

it rrmst have a umversal and compelling force ... The social
compact gives the body politic ahsolzite povser over dl its
members ... The voice of the people is the voice of God”

This is very far, we should insist, from the political theory
upon which our own democracy is established. We agree with
Rousseau that the ballot is the fairest and most expedient means
of determining public opinion and electing an administration;
but we do not believe with Rousseau that the use of this
method requires us ever to renounce our indmdual judgment,
and to accept the vote of a majority as the voice of our “real”
conscience. If an Aryan majority should vote to exterminate
a non-Aryan minority, if a white majority should vote to
enslave a Negro minority — ^is that the voice of God? It is
not Rousseau’s faith out of which grew our American institu-
tions. These were established to define and to limit the powers
of the state, to protect minorities, and to place moral sanctions
wholly and forever in the individual conscience. But Rousseau’s
concept of the general will was the faith out of which must
grow, steadily as the decades pass, absolutism such as we see
growing in our world today. We must know that there is no
general will. There are only individual wills.

Several things con^ired to disguise from Rousseau the ab-
solutism implicit in his theory, or to reconcile him with it. He
proposed to limit the size of the state so radically that no estab-
lished government, possessed of permanent power, would be
needed. The whole ccwnmunity could in this case gather in
general assembly to exercise its political responsibilities; and
this would tend to prevent the alienation of political power
from individual citizens to some well-entrenched caucus or
political machine. But the proposal to limit states to small
townships is wholly impracticable. The irresistible movement
of civilized society is toward states of continental size, exerting
highly concentrated power. It is the more important therefore
to define governmental powers, and to secure the principle of
individual and minority rights. In the large modern state it is

THE REVIVAL OF POLITICAL ABSOLXmSM

325

political revolt that was to incite a no less violent reaction; and
the path of social progress in France became tortuous and
difficult.

Like the C5nnics and Cyrenaics of ruined Greece, Rousseau
sought refuge from social ills in the ideal of the “natural man,”
emancipated from all social convention and completely good
in his original nature; but where the Greek reformer identified
this original nature with reason, Rousseau identified it with
feeling or sentiment. This appeal to feeling made him a prophet
of romanticism, and one of the forerunners of the later “revolt
against reason.” Thus Rousseau’s social rebellion initially in-
dicted the whole development of civilization, with all of its
moral and intellectual outcome. He held up the “noble savage”
as the proper ideal of a humanity freed from the corruptions
and diseases of civilization. (This ideal was of course a sheer
fiction. Primitive or “savage” man is far more bound than are
we by tabu and social convention, and the history of civiliza-
tion is that of a progressive emancipation of the individual;
but it was a fiction giving forceful expression to a revolt against
moral and intellectual restraint which has moved underneath all
later European life, and which finally broke through the surface
of moral “convention” to perpetrate the massacres and brutalities
of the last three decades.) By replacing the natural and spon-
taneous relations among men with a wholly artificial structure,
Rousseau taught, civilization induces an unhealthy growth in
which man grows progressively more corrupt. With his natural
sentiments deformed by unhealthy arts, and with his native
intelligence destroyed by a cold and artificial intellectualism,
man developed an industrial economy which divided society
into the wealthy and the poverty-stricken, and then estab-
lished a tyrannous state which sanctified and perpetuated eco-
nomic injustice as political “justice.” Civilization and the in-
tellect, he concluded, are all our woe, our progress is truly a
progressive decay, and health is to be regained only by sweep-
ing out of existence the whole corrupted fabric of civilized

THE REVIVAL OF POLITICAL ABSOLUTISM 327

the theas which is fundamental to “progressive education” to-
day. Its attack upon a too formal education, and its concern
for the vital development of the individual child, have never
ceased to be provocative of educational reform. There is moral
and religious significance in its rejection of the doctrine of
original sin, a tenet of the Calvinistic faith which originated in
Rousseau’s birthplace, Geneva. Yet this pedagogical theory, like
most of Rousseau’s thought, is equivocal. To remove children
wholly from adult influence, say by letting them grow up to-
gether in the woods, would be to produce something neither
animal nor human, and nothing like what Rousseau envisaged
as “the natural man.” Any and every educatio nal program,
whether it be progressive or formal, Wl provide an environ-
ment which is stimulating in some ways and restraining in
others, and which will importantly condition the child’s de-
velopment.

What Rousseau and the progressive educator really pro-
pose, therefore, is to study the child as a growing organism
and as a unique individual, and on the basis of this understand-
ing to provide stimulation and opportunity adapted to the
individual child; and such education may go far beyond that
casually provided by the adult society which is the child’s en-
vironment A pedagogy of this sort will indeed be more effec-
tive, and determine the character and personality of the pupil
much more deeply and strongly, than a formal and stereotyped
education. Such education requires, of course, a more intimate
understanding and closer care of the individual child by the
educator, with more effective direction of the child’s develop-
ment. The result of such education will depend almost wholly
upon the character and ideals of the educator. A liberal educa-
tor will produce liberals, a revolutionary will produce rebels,
and a reactionary will produce reactionaries. The progressive
educator is self-deceived, unless he is of the sort that just turns
his pupils out to grass, if he thinks of his pupils’ development
as in some peculiar way a natural growth. He himself, with

THE REVIVAL OF POLITICAL ABSOLUTISM 329

whole people; and this ascription of absolute moral authority
to one part of society, that expressing its “will,” necessarily
requires the extension to that part of an absolute authority
recognizing no limits to government. A group or class so em-
powered could never be ’ustifiably nor successfully challenged.
The town meeting can no longer be our government. The
democratic spirit of the town meeting had to be built into
the Constimtion of the United States, setting limits to govern-
ment in the interests of individual liberty.

It should be remarked that the political theory of Rousseau
has nowhere, neither in France nor elsewhere, supported a
stable and healthy democratic society. To affirm that men are
basically good is not to affirm that any and every majority is
necessarily and absolutely right, so that not to accept its de-
cision is to convict oneself of immorality. If there is a general
will, why must it locate itself in a given majority? Why might
it not locate itself in an intelligent, specially trained, intensely
patriotic, or hereditarily privileged minority? The absolutists
seized upon Rousseau’s concept, and discovered the general
will to reside in aristocratic national tradition (Burke), in a
feudal monarchy (Hegel), in racial or national exclusiveness
(Fichte), in the sheer will to power (Nietzsche), in imperial
ambition (Mussolini), in a divine emperor (Japan), in the
proletariat (Marx and Lenin.) The doctrine is just what de-
mocracy must and does reject. Constitutional democracy se-
cures the absolute rights of all individuals, allowing to govern-
ment only limited and delegated powers. Political absolutism
secures absolute power to some group, ostensibly the vehicle
of the “general will,” and therefore identified with “the state.”
For democracy there is no state or states, there are only
individuals and their governments.

Notes for Further Reading

I. Hibben, J. G., Philosophy of the Enlightenment. New York,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910.

18

KANT: CAN RATIONALISM AND
EMPIRICISM BE RECONCILED?

w HAVE NOW SEEN THE TWO OPPOSED INTER-

pretadons of modern science. Descartes and his suc-
cessors perpetuate the mjonalistic iptei^retadon in a modified
and more exacting form. They hold tiiat reason is equipped
with certain absolute principles or concepts which apply un-
failingly and of necessity to every detail of particular fact-
Natiixal science accordingly is just the continued application
to existent fact of these at^lute principles defining the ultimate
structure of the universe. The empiricists, on the contrary, in-
sist that natur^UIrQOwri^dge is- dmved from experience, and
conasts of empirical generalisations summarizing observed par-
ticular facts. Their criticism of rationalism culminates in
Hume, who concludes that even the best-established principles
of natural science fall short of absolute certainty, and possess
only a high probability as habits of mind determined by past
experience.

It would seem that neither of these opposed views can be
completely discounted. Rationalism failed to explain such
principles as the law of gravitation, which seems to be uni-
versal in scope although it is not a self-evident or rational

33 *

KANT

333

temporary thought. K we will return to the spirit or intention
of Kant, while renouncing his false premises, we shall succeed
where he failed. We shall reach a conception at once rational
and empirical, able to embrace the largest insights of past
philosophy.

Immmuel Kant (1724-1804) lived the uneventful life of a
professor at the remote University of Konigsberg in northern
Prussia. He had some Scottish ancestry, awareness of which
may have made him more susceptible to Hume. His family
was Pietist, a fervent sect similar to our Quakers. His education
was of the very formal, scholastic sort then prevalent in Ger-
many. This education gave him a horrendous vocabulary; but
it strengthened his conviction in the integrity of the largest
intellectual tradidon of western thought, that which came from
Greek antiquity.

The philosophy imbibed by Kant in his school education
consisted chiefly of a scholasticized version of Leibniz; and it
is evident from Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation that this study
had already made him aware of certain difficulties in the ra-
tionalistic philosophy. He had learned from Leibniz that the
general principles of reason could never disclose anything con-
cerning the location in space and time of a given event. Even
if we were to suppose all of the general principles of physical
science to be given to us with the reason, these principles
would never necessitate the existence of a solar system, with a
son having just this mass and just so many planets. The general
laws of matter would never reveal how matter is distributed
in space and time. This meant, Kant saw, that aU acmal knowl-
edge requires experience, and that the world in its concrete
content is a contingent world. But it was the study of Hume,
Kant tells us himself, that “awoke him from his dogmatic
slumber.” Kant was the first, and remains one of the few, to
grasp the full implication of Hume’s criticism; and it was be-
cause he comprehended Hume’s teaching that he realized its
inadequacy as a description of human knowledge, and set him -

KANT

335

reacting according to known mechanical laws. Kant did
not share the view of the earlier empiricists that scien-
tific method may be applied to human nature, to produce
a science of human behavior. In his conception of science, he
remained Cartesian and dualistic. There is physical nature, sub-
ject to mechanical law; and there is the human mind, which
faces and knows a physical nature of which it is no part.
Leibniz had written, in a late work critical of the empiricism
of Locke: “Yes, everything in the mind is derived from ex-
perience — except the intellect itself!” Kant subscribed to this
view. The mind is not merely a part of nature. It has its own
constitution and its peculiar sort of activity; and this intellectual
constitution enters into all our knowledge. Kant’s problem was
to show how the intellect with its fixed principles combines
with the empirical material provided by the senses, in such a
way as to do violence to neither element. It is dear, he believed,
that the most basic intellectual principles caimot be derived
from experience. They are and remain authoritative, and to
deny their authority is simply to end in skepticism. Hume
might say that there is no necessary causal connection in nature,
that a stone flung into the air might just as easily — ^that is, for
aught we know — ^fly up to the moon as sink to earth. But sup-
pose that just one stone, so flung, did not fall to earth — ^would
not the sdentist look for a cause? Would he not reclassify
stones into gravitating and nongravitating substances, and per-
sistently seek until he had found the deeper law, or the under-
lying natural necessity, which rules botW* Science aflSrms causal
determination in nature; it does not merely aflBrm a subjective
determination of human expectancies. Sdence has never had
to retract this demand, nor could it retract the demand with-
out committing suicide. Not to require causal connection in
nature would be to suppose that anything, or nothing, may
cause an)rthing. It was in the interests of empirical science it-
self, we should see, that Kant took issue with Hume.

So Kant will establish empirical science and philosophy in a

KANT

337

this is the sort of proposition that could be wrong, and is estab-
lished only by empirical evidence, i.e. by observation or ex-
periment.

Mathematical propositions, then, are a priori and rational;
but do they constitute real knowledge, or are they, as the
empiricists implied, only a knowledge of words or ideas? Kant
recognized that there are such purely nominal definitions,
merely disclosing what is meant by a word. Thus the sentence
“a dog is an animal” is necessarily true, but it is true only be-
cause the word “dog” means a certain sort of animal, and what
is not an animal could therefore not be called a “dog.” Such
propositions E^nt calls analytic, because they only analyze the
meanings of words, and do not necessarily tell us anything
about the world. “Angels are bodiless spirits” is a perfectly
good analytic proposition, because it correctly defines “angels”;
but it tells us nothing about the world if we have no empirical
evidence that angek exist. If the propositions of mathematics
are of this? analytic sort, their absoluteness is of litde impor-
tance, since they need describe nothing in the world. (This
was Berkeley's view, and at times Hume’s.) But Kant holds
mathematical propositions to be synthetic. They cannot be
reduced to nominal definitions, he says, because they do more
than state the meanings of words. The word “triangle,” for
example, may necessarily mean three intersecting lines; but
it does not logically imply that the angles of a triangle sum up
to i8o°. One might know the meaning of “triangle” without
knowing this. Yet everyone believed, when Kant wrote, that
a triangle necessarily contains angles to the sum of i8o°. Thus
Kant reaches his conclusion that the propositions of mathe-
matics are at once a priori and synthetic. They are necessary,
certain, absolute, universal in their truth; and yet they con-
stitute a knowledge of fact, i.e. of things, and not merely a
knowledge of words and their meanings.

How, Kant asks, is such a priori synthetic knowledge possi-
ble? How can we have an intuition into the universal, absolute,

KANT

339

do in mathematics. They see numbers, but do not count and
name them.

The second level of mind is built upon the first. It produces
an order defined in the categories of the understanding, such
as relationship, causation, substance, etc. These categories play
into all our ordinary thinking; but they are most consistently
applied in science, which carries further the modes of thinking
used in common sense. These constitutional forms should not
be thought of as passive or inert. They are the forms of our
conscious activity in perception and intellection. They are
fixed and definable ways of organizing, ordering, and cata-
loguing sensations.

But why, and by what right, does the mind organize its sen-
sations first into temporal succession and spatial order, and
then into the more complicated and specific spatiotemporai
patterns we call “causal processes,” “substances,” etc.? The
librarian, cataloguing his books as they arrive, follows a general
plan of some specific sort. He may catalogue them alphabeti-
cally, or according to the date of their publication, or by their
subject matter, or in some complicated way using all of these
orders. What plan does the mind follow? Its ultimate aim,
Kant says, is 'unity, a single all-comprehensive ^stem. Evi-
dently, the sort of pattern that results will be determined in
some degree by the sort of sensory material that is to be or-
ganized; and we can accordingly specify, in some degree, the
sort of pattern that is reached. For example, all of our sensa-
tions whatsoever belong in the time-order; but only some of
them enter into the ^ace-order, while others do not. Those
which are spatially ordered we attribute to external reality;
and our effort to organize these iuto unity is guided by our
idea of a completed world. We never actually complete this
oiganizadon, so that the nnorld remains only an ided, always
in the making. Those sensations which cannot be ^atialized
Kant attributes to our internal reality; and these are organized
in view of an idea or ideal of the self, which again, of course,

KANT

341

perception, because perception is composed of sensations so
ordered. Similarly, we may be sure that every perceived event
will have its determinate causes and effects, and take its place
in the physical order revealed by science. Science is established,
consequently, upon a solid basis of rational and necessary
truth. Its basic categories are beyond dispute.

However, there are important negative consequences flowing
from Kant’s study. These rational principles are really princi-
ples of mental procedure. We caimot change them, because
they are constitutive of thought; yet they do not, as they
stand, describe anything outside of the mind. They cannot be
called “principles of absolute being.” They become descriptive
only when they are actually applied in the organization of
sensory material. Our knowledge stretches, therefore, only as
far as our experience extends, or perhaps as far as human
experience extends, if we may believe what others have seen.
It follows that although the principles are universal and abso-
lute, the knowledge which they produce is not so, because it
extends only as far as a limited human experience. “Concepts
without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are
blind,” wrote Kant in a justly famous phrase.

Kant seems to have reached his objective, which was to
reconcile the apparently opposed claims of rationalism and
empiricism. The rationalist is correct in his defense of absolute
principles, but wrong in his claim to absolute knowledge. The
empiricist is right in claiming that knowledge derives from
experience, but wrong when he denies absolute principles. The
trath is, Kant holds, that we have actual knowledge when the
material provided by experience is properly organized by
means of absolute principles — and only then. Knowledge is
more than a summary of past experience; but it is less than an
insight into universal being. Einowledge is the integration of
a lirated experience in the direction of an ideal of unity whi^h
lies beyond experience. If we could integrate all experience,
we might achieve this ideal, and know absolute being; but

KANT

343

is infinite in time and space, yet also finitej that nature had a
first cause or beginning, yet that every beginning had its earlier
cause; etc. The principles of reason in this way themselves
prohibit or rather protest their abuse. They are regulative prin-
ciples, not descriptive truths. They work well so long as we
use them in the description of some limited part of nature,
i.e. apply them in the analysis of particular fact. But they col-
lapse when we try to make them the pillars of a knowledge of
absolute, universal being. The reason, as Locke saw, has its
inherent limits. It is the indispensable servant of empirical
science; but it is useless when divorced from ejtperience, as it
is divorced in all metaphysics.

But at this point we must ask: Do- we not begin here to
undermine the power or validity of empirical science, as well
as that of rationalistic metaphysics? Should we not suspect that
principles which collapse when we work t^m too hard are
less than reliable even where they seem tOfUerve well? How do
we know that the regulative, organizing pifinciples of the mind
give us knowledge of reality when we apply them circum-
spectly, in actual experience? We cannot know, Kant replies,
r/x nsorld that appears to usiin perception, and that is de-
scribed by empirical science, is a phenoTnenal world. It is some-
thing we ourselves construct; and since we can never get out of
■ourselves, to see the world without looking at it and to know
the world without thinking it, we can never know the relation
of our knowledge to that nommnd reality which is reality-in-
itself. We are like a person who is given a few of the
fragmentary words or syllables which, in their totality, com-
pose a story, and who is challenged to reconstruct the story.
We know certain rules of composition, and we do our best; but
there is no one who knows the original story, to tell us how
nearly we are reproducing it. Is our version at all creditable?
Or, dreadful thought, is there no original? Do we compose only
our own dream? Is science reconstruction of the real, or is it
merely a human construction or artifact?

BJcsr

345

the phenomenal fire merely. The appearance of fire we could
csrtinguish merely by closing our eyes or moving elsewhere.
Thus we move in a real world, we act upon real things, yet
we see and know only appearances! And what is more, we
know the difference between extinguishing the fire itself, and
removing its appearance! Somehow, therefore, we do distin-
guish between phenomena and noumena; and this involves
knowledge of both. The positivistic doctrine, moreover, be-
comes immoral when it is applied to living organisms. We must
believe that a dog’s yelp indicates real pain in the dog, not
merely the phenomenon in our minds. We must believe that
our s}.TTipathy helps a real person to forget a real sorrow. As
Kant will recognize in his study of morality, moral insight must
penetrate through appearance and reach reality, if moral judg-
ments are to be valid. But moral judgments are conditioned by
factual judgments, and are valid only if these are true.

We may conclude, perhaps, that Kant’s study of knowledge
reveals its own failme by thus issuing in phenomenalism. We
may not buy our faith in science at so high a price. But Kant’s
study is valuable even in its failure. It has revealed to what
degree sdenoe is an elaborate edifice, constructed by the mind.
Kant, following the empiricists, has invalidated the old naive
realism which took knowledge to be a direct reflection of an
external reality in the eye or mind. Further, he has shown that
the effort to retain universal rational principles, at least if we
accept also the empirical view that natural knowledge comes
from experience, leads to a new sort of skepticism, namely
phenomenalism. It would seem that any regrilative principle
which is imposed by the mind upon experience, and which in-
troduces into experience its own structure, must have this out-
come. To avoid this skeptical outcome, we would need regula-
tive principles which merely open the mind to what lies outside
of the mind. To see, we must open our eyes. To know, we
must open our minds. What would such principles be, requiring
us to open eyes and mind?

KANT

347

reappeais in the Kantian dualism of phenomenon and non-
mencm, appearance and reality.

These difEculties or inadequacies in the Kantian philosophy
were apparent in Kant’s day, not least to Kant hunself; but
they were inescapable then, and for long afterwards. Once we
suppose that certain principles, for instance those of mathe-
matics, are at once absolute or rational and necessarily descrip-
tive of the world, we are caught in Kant’s dilemma and im-
pelled toward Kant’s conclusions. The great value of Kant’s
philosophy is first to have clearly defined, m its definition of
a priori synthetic propositions, the essential core of rational-
ism; and then to have shovm the inevitable consequences of
rationalism, in phenomenalism or positivism. No one has shed
so much light upon the intellectual process, with its rational
and empirical elements and their relationship, as did Klant.

But today this foundation of a priori synthetic knowledge,
upon which Kant established his whole study, no longer exists.
Within the twentieth century, advances in logic, mathematics,
and physical science have shifted the weight of evidence against
Kant’s basic premise stating that the propositions of mathe-
matics are a priori yet ^nthetic. Physicists now treat geo-
metrical theories as physicd hypotheses, modifying them as re-
quired by the observed facts; and this means that geometrical
propositions are synthedc or descriptive of fact, but not abso-
lute nor a priori. Logicians, on the other hand, have shown that
the axioms of arithmedc may be regarded as analydc proposi-
dons which merely define the uses or meanings of symbols.
Thus the evidence today no longer supports the premises upon
which Kant's study was based. When Kant wrote, all extant
evidence supported his belief in the existence of a priori syn-
thetic propositions. Today, if this belief is not conclusively
falsified, it is at least shown to be dubious and precarious. Th^
shift of evidence in Kant’s disfavor does not imply that Kant
was mistaken in his acknowledgment of a rational elf^rnen t in

KANT

349

ciples, had believed in absolute moral principles. Kant finds no
a priori and s%'nthet:c moral truths, corresponding to those of
mathematics in science. Because he had established all scientific
knowledge upon this basis of a priori and synthetic principles,
he is compelled to deny the possibility of every sort of moral
science, even or especially an empirical moral science such as
the utilitarians pursued.

WTiat then is moral insight, if there is neither a rational
science establishing absolute moral principles, nor an empirical
science deriving moral knowledge from experience? Is moral
judgment arbitrary and irrational? No, Kant replies; it is, on
the contrary, the only sort of judgment that might be called
absolute and wholly rational. Moral judgment, Kant believes,
penetrates through the curtain of phenomena which veils us
from reality-in-itself, and reaUy gra^s, in full and naked imme-
diacy, its noumenal object in reality. Kant is recognizing here
that although we may fail to describe ultimate being in con-
cepraal formulas, we are ourselves real and ultimate in our
movement and conduct. Girrect moral judgment is therefore
right conduct, intelligent practice. An act is right, Kant be-
lieves, if it is motivated wholly by good will; and in our con-
science we have awareness of our motives. We cannot see into
other hearts, and know their motives; and so we do well not to
judge others’ conduct. W’hen we are motivated by good will,
Kant implies, we have true insight into the individual atuadon
upon which we act. G>nscience is a sort of knowledge; but
because it is an individual awareness of a unique particular
situation, it does not provide general principles nor moral
theories. What has been prescribed as general precept and
moral code, Kant says, truly amounts only to a classification of
the material situations in wHch the moral drama plays. We may
speak of cases of honesty or dishonesty, kindness or cruelty,
etc. But what makes an act honest or dishonest, kind or
cruel, is its activation of an individual moral insight which is
never duplicated. The noumenal reality which appears in the

KAinr

351

Kant’s moral doctrine has been much debated since he pre-
sented it to the world, some accusing it of being empty, others
proceeding to infer from it a whole code of moral precepts.
In the writer’s opinion, such debate is today out of place.
Kant’s formulation of moral doctrine was based upon the con-
clusions of the first Critique-^ and these conclusions required
the absolute separation of judgments of fact from moral judg-
ments. But we no longer accept the assumptions, and therefore
we escape the conclusions, of the first Critique. However, Kant’s
doctrine is far from being empty. It presupposes a plurahty of
persons or human individuals, each an end or ultimate value in
himself, and each possessed of individual rights and of respon-
sibility for aU other individuals. It is, in short, the moral theory
of Locke, upon which was established democratic society; and
the writer confesses that he has found no other doctrine upon
which democratic justice can be established.

It is in truth a metaphysical doctrine, affirming that human
beings are ultimate, irreducible, plural, and individual — or it
would be a metaphysical doctrine, if this irredudbly individ-
ualistic pattern of human nature were extended to all of nature
and made universal.

If Kant’s ethical doctrine provided the indispensable founda-
tion of democratic practice, Kant’s polifical theory falls short
of what we might reasonably expect from him. It is true that
he explicitly locates moral responsibility in ihe individuaL and
denies that the state has an intrinsic value aud authority; yet
these explicit statements are prejudiced by the admission fbar
the state is a necessary condition of moral conduct and indi-
vidual freedom. This view would ultimately compel us to allow
to the state an unquestionable and absolute authority. This con-
ception, we have seen, goes back to Rousseau and Hobbes,
who also conceived the state to be the necessary source of all
morality. It is not consistent with the Kantian ethics, which
defines the human individual as a moral being, independent
of any political organization. Truer to his ethical insight is

KANT

353

science becomes ineifable, and can express itself only in action.
Kno'wing and doing must proceed in different worlds. Science
and morality face opposite ways,

Kant, it seemed, had wholly sundered science and morality.
Yet in his first Critique, Kant had taught that our knowledge
of the world and our knowledge of the self should ultimately
be brought together in a comprehensive syntheas of experi-
ence, under the regulation of the Idea of God. In his third
and last Critique he attempted this synthesis.

TTie Critique of Judg}»ent should have been the crown of
tjhi’.cscphical study and the keystone of his great
architecrcnic; b-r :r was in fact a supreme and tragic failure.
All of its great enterprises tail off into negative conclusions.
Kant pays in this book the full price of the errors of the earlier
Critiques. And yet, through this explicit failure, there shines
like a great promise the suggestion of what the book would
have been if it had succeeded. Here, as always, Kant’s genius
lay in his grasp of the speculative problem and the right ap-
proach to it, and not in his attempted solution of it; and in this
third Critique, the problem attacked is the last, most ultimate
of all problems, namely the relation of human life with its
effort, its conscience, and its consciousness, to the world en-
vironing and generating that life.

Let us first appreciate the Critique of Judgment in its grand
plan; and only then consider why the vast projection failed!
The book proposed what seemed impossible, a synthesis of the
first two Critiques bringing together the two domains of scien-
tific and moral cognition, which had there been defined in such
a way as to exclude each other. With the simplicity character-
istic of genius, Kant points out that the only likeness between a
scientific judgment and a moral judgment is that both are
judgments. If we knew, therefore, what is involved in any act
of judgment even as such, we should have a clue to the con-
nection between science and morality. What, he asks, are the
presuppositions of any and every judgment?

KANT 355

lime; and in works of art, he distinguishes talent from genius
and technical facility from aesthetic insight.

What more can one say concerning this character of aes-
thetic value or beauty? What is its claim upon us? It does not
incite, but rather discourages, intellectual analysis and formal
classification. We feel that the beautiful object is consummate,
that it fulfils itself and beggars description. It makes and meets
a claim, it realizes a need which is not ours but its own. All
beauty, Kant concludes, is apprehension of some realization of
individual being. We love the thing for its own sake, not for
our sake. This quality of beauty, this mark of individual self-
realkation, seems to be wholly objective and independent of
our minds.

At the root of all judgment whatsoever lies this aesthetic
apprehension of objective individual being; and presumably
all science and all morality, in their movements to comprehend
experience and enrich judgment, do no more than integrate or
S}’T:thcsize this basic and primary aesthetic aspect of reality.
Nor does there seem any Umit within experience to this aes-
thetic quality. Nature is beautiful in our widest percepdon of it,
for example in the night sky with its illimitable distances. Does
all scientific and moral conprehension of fact only formulate
our aesthetic apprehensicai of reality? Can we say that nature at
large realizes itself, and thus manifests purpose and aim? Do
science and moral insight conjoin, to reach this final insight
into a reality which in its largest design, even as in its most
particular detail, reveals a single purposive intelligence? This
would indeed make science and morality consummate, by
shovting them to be respectively the theory and the practice of
a religious apprehension of universal being.

This is the sort of synthesis that is suggested in the third
Critique-, but the plan is not carried out, because at each step
some obstacle arises to prevent its advance. Thus Kant will not
allow cognitive status to aesthetic insight, because he finds no
a priori aesthetic principles regulating aesthetic judgment. W^e

KANT

357

mechanical clock serves tJie purpose of its maker. We have
no right, he says, reverting to the arguments of the first
Critique, to make statements about a completed universe, since
cxperier.ee is but fragmentary. If nature provides the condi-
tions of human life, it is no less true that man helps to provide
the conditions of plant and animal life. Kant concludes that
the apparent beauty and the seeming purposiveness of nature
are no argument for religion. Religion stands or falls as a neces-
sary presupposition of moral conduct. Because virtue evi-
dently receives no reward on earth, Kant means, belief in God
and immortality is required to make moral effort reasonable.
No rational establishment of religion is possible. Religion has
no intellectual defense, no relation to science, none to art.

Two motives influenced Kant in this destructive third
Critique, which suggests a rational conception of religion only
in order to invalidate that conception. One motive was his
desire to leave absolute authority to moral judgment, which
he feared would be weakened by any dependence upon aes-
thetic or even religious presuppositions. The other was his ina-
bility' to conceive of a science not identified with mechanistic
piijysics, or to modify in any way the assumption and conclu-
sioms of his first Critique. TTie first and third Critiques do in
fact collide head on, in such wise that the insight of the one
precludes that of the other. The first Critique was concerned to
establish universal principles supporting science; and to do this,
Krat was compelled to deal with particular character as a mere
fiUpng or content, wholly subjected to and articulated by these
principles. The third Critique aimed, however, to explain the
relation between particular character and these universal forms
of judgment; and this required some appreciation of particular
character as such, in itself. Kant recognized the ubiquity of
particular character in experience, and the aesthetic faculty by
means of which we immediately apprehend it; but he could
not develop this empirical theme, nor allow particular character
to mold the principles and shape the larger concepts of natural

KANT 359

homan thought may today be brought to a successful conclu-
sion. But between Kant and ourselves lies a century of social
and intellectual development which has rather radically re-
oriented thought. We must know something of this recent
history if we are to understand the contemporary mind. In
reviewing this history, we should not forget that behind it
there still stands the great issue, which we have followed since
the beginning of our study, between those rational and em-
pirical tendencies of mind which in their composition are
creative thought, and in their disruption intellectual and moral
skepticism. Kant’s problem still remains, essentially as he stated
it in his three immortal works. One may “get around Kant,”
as some contemporary philosophers advise — ^but only to return
by some detour to tl^ crucial nexus of intellectual life, which
Kant faced so squarely, and which he failed to untie only
because of his fidelity to what seemed at that time the undeni-
able fact that natural science stands upon a rational system of
absolute mathematical knowledge.

Notes for Further Reading

1. Kant, L, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. D. Meikle-

john, M. Miiller, N. K Smith. New York, The Macmillan
Gjmpany, 1914.

2. Prolegomena to Metaphysics, ed. P. Cams. La Salle, 111 .,

The Open Court Publishing Company, 1902.

3. “The Critique of Practical Reason,” Theory of Ethics,

trans. T. K Abbott. Boston, Longmans, Green and Com-
pany, 1898.

4. The Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard. New

York, The Macmillan Company, 1931. Trans. J. C. Mere-
dith. London and New York, The Oxford University Press,
1911, 1928.

5. The Inaugural Dissertation, etc,, trans. J. Handyside-

La Salle, 111 ., The Open Court Publishing Company, 1929.

6. Perpetual Peace, trans. M. C. Smith. New York, The

Macmillan Company, 1917.

19 DIALECTICAL IDEALISM

Hegel, and so take up issues which are very much
alive today, when they are the subject of controversy which
has moved from the lecture hall to the field of battle. From
Kant, as from Socrates in antiquity, radiated movements in
several directions, sometimes diametrically opposed. TTie most
important of these movements, viewed in the perspective of
today, is that which culminated in the dialectic^ philosophies
of Hegel and Marx.

To understand dialectical philosophy in its historical sources,
we must turn to a passage of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
entitled “transcendental dialectic.” Here Kant warns against
the abuse of a priori principles. These principles are properly
used empirically, i.e. in the organization by the scientist of per-
ceptual experience or observed fact; and apart from this use,
they are empty and describe nothing. Kant believed that when
these organizing principles are taken to be descriptive in them-
selves, independently of factual content, they lead to self-
contradictions and absurdities. For example, logical principles
are indispensable to the construction of intelligible hypotheses,
descriptive of natural processes; but we must not suppose that
the rules of logic constitute of themselves, prior to their ap-

361

dialectical idealism 363

edge. Dialectical philosophy usually refers to the conceptual
system elaborated by these pc«t-Kantians.

The chief propounders of this dialectic were Fichte, Schel-
iing, Hegel, and Marx. We will shorten our discussion by con-
sidering only very summarily the jfirst two of these men. Fichte
appropriated the Kantian vocabularly so thoroughly that an
early essay was mistaken by the printer for a work of Kant,
and published as such. The degree to which Fichte appro-
priated the thought of Kant is at least debatable. He distin-
guishes science which is merely empirical, and which he
equates with materialistic philosophy, from a dialectical
“science” which he called Wmemchaftslehre (theory of
knowledge). The Wissenschitftslehre presents an idealistic
metaphysics discounting the material world as only phenom-
enal or illusory. The illusion is projected by the Self or Will
(the “transcendental Ego”), as the condition of moral or spirit-
ual activity. The wiU is said to project “matter” in order to
have something to work on. When the moral will slackens, this
phenomenal projection of the Self hardens into a material
world, ruled by mechanical inertia and reducing those who
believe in it to slavery. Our duty is to throw off this illusion
of mechanical necessity, and to liberate the true Self, creative
in moral activity. According to the manner of man you are,
Fichte said, you will choose between a mechanical science
Vhich enslaves you and the Wissenschaftslehre which en-
franchises the creative Self. Fichte was also the ardent patriot
whose Addresses to the German Nation helped to arouse Ger-
many to resist the invader Napoleon. He assured the German
people of their cultural unity and of their mission to spread
this superior culture through the world. As a means to national
unity, he advocated “the closed economic state.” Fichte’s exag-
gerated nationalism may be excused as a reply to foreign inva-
aon; but there is no doubt of the historical continuity between
his teaching and the national socialism of Nazi Germany.

dialectical idealism

365

Kant’s successors rejected his equivocal stand on the meta-
physical issue. They advanced the idealistic thesis that the most
basic principles of reason, presenting the constitution of the
mind, must of necessity be taken to define the objective struc-
ture of reality. This thesis is not improperly named “Objective
Idealism,” became it claims that all the objects we know are
mental constructs. Kant’s logical or dialectical analysis of the^
mind and its concepts was thus converted into a rationalistic
metaphysics, claiming to discover by purely logical and non-
empiiical study — ^by a sort of intellectual introspection or
“reflection” — ^the ultimate Being which is universal reality. The
post-Kantian dialecticians variously modify and develop Kant’s
analysis of the categories of thought. Dialectical philosophy
is a new, more extreme and more powerful form of the ration-
alism which claims that final, absolute, and universal knowl-
edge is the achievement of an intellectual intuition, going
beyond a merely empirical science which is able to advance'
only to probable hypothesis. Dialectical philosophy is a retuni
to the rationalism of Plato, without his dualistic reservationsii

To evaluate justly this powerful modem rationalism, one
must consider the following facts. First, conceptual analysis of
this logical sort is indispensable to every science, because
science rightly seeks to bring into theoretical unity its diverse
hypotheses. Only one science, physics, has as yet explicitly
acknowledged this responsibility. The mathematical physicist
is the “dialectician” who seeks to systematize the special hy-
potheses advanced by experimental physicists. It is all-important
to observe, however, that the mathematical physicist does not
ascribe finality to his comprehensive formulations. He recog-
nizes their tentative or hypothetical character; and he expects
the experimental physicists to apply his theory to observable
fact, and to confirm or disprove it by this empirical test. This
is a proper use of logic or dialectic. It leaves logic within
science, subject to the empirical method of science to which
it is auxiliary. Every science might do well to follow phyacs

DIAtECriCAL IDEAUSM

367

confirmed or disproved, which conditions all scientific hy-
pothesis whatsoever. It is the postulate that real being is
identical with individual being. This philosophical truth is to-
day well established, as will be shown in the concluding
chapters of this book. Dialectical philosophy substituted for
this truth the rationalistic error: Real being is universal being.
We shall show how this error generates the confusion of
mind which is dialectical philosophy. But we stress here that
the dialecticians were justified in their pursuit of a truth tran-
scending empirical hypothesis. There is indeed the absolute and
final truth which supports and justifies aU scientific hypothesis.
There is scientific faith; and this needs philosophical establish-
ment.

And now, after having appreciated these justifiable motives
of the dialecticians, we must be rather severely critical. Funda-
mental to their systems is the false presumption that a reflective
and merely conceptual analysis, unchecked by experience, can
disclose the complete anatomy of universal nature. To reach
their large definitions of universal structure, they simply bor-
rowed the concepts of science current in their day, and wove
these into a verbd pattern. They ignored or abused logic, pre-
tending that their dialectic constituted a superlogic. The dia-
lectic, they said, discovers necessary synthetic propositions,
where ordinary logic discovers only analytic propositions. This
dialectical “logic,” using its “infallible rational intuition,” is
supposed to generate all scientific concepts in their true order,
and to reach an absolute, all-comprehensive, and completely
rigorous system of knowledge. This claim was really dis-
credited by the dialecticians themselves; for their “dialectical
logic” and “rational inmition” disclosed to different philos-
ophers different systems, shaped to their personal predilections.

The Hegelian system still remains the superlative example of
dialectical construction. Hegel despised Fichte and Schelling
for the slovenliness of their analysis; and he certainly produced
a far more closely knit and impressive architectonic. He starts

dialectical idealism

369

gradually unfolded its real but implicit content in all of the
stages of physical and organic being; it comes to provisional
consciousness in human intelligence; and its final and complete
realization is philosophical understanding. Fichte identified
ultimate reality with wUl; Schelling identified it with aesthetic
insight; now Hegel identifies it with intellectual process. In his
vast dialectic, Hegel tried to give meaning and plausibility to
the idealistic thesis which states that reality is Mind, His philos-
ophy has remained the chief resource of idealistic metaphysics.

The contemporary thinker may also return to certain
Hegelian insights which are broader than the dialectical sys-
tem, and perhaps independent of it. Some would say that
Hegel’s greatest work is not his Logic, presenting the didectic,
but the epistemology presented in ^ Phenomenology of
Mind, which is a sort of preface to liis more systematic writing.
This is indeed a brilliant critique of the Kanfian philosophy,
and possibly the most brilliant defense in any literature of
rationalistic doctrine.

It was necessary for any German thinker who did not iden-
tify himself with Kant to meet and overcome the Kan tian
critique of rationalism. We saw that Kant accepted the em-
pirical teaching that descriptive knowledge derives wholly
from experience, that he allowed to the pure reason only the
task of ordering sensations entering the mind from outside, and
that this sharp dualism of sensational material and rational
order finally drove him to a skeptical positivism, li mi ting
science to a knowledge of phenomena and allowing no claim
to an intellectual grasp of “reality in itself.” In the Phenome-
nology, Hegel criticizes Kant’s absolute separation of sensation
and concept. The “sense-manifold” of Kant, he shows, is un-
thinkable, and evaporates into nothing when subjected to
scrutiny. The relation between sense-experience and knowl-
edge is not just the relation of chaotic material to articulate
conception. Perception itself is already perfectly articulate.
Content void of form is as meaningless as form void of content.

DULECnCAL roEALISM 37 1

power of that thought or succumb to its plausibility? Let us
insist, for the moment, that science apparently cannot subscribe
to it! The scientist must still separate his conception, i.e. his
theory or hypothesis, from the particular sensed material which
suggests and confirms his thought. How else could particular
sensed fact confirm or disprove hypothesis? The scientist,
moreover, must esteem sensed fact even more highly than he
esteems the most comprehensive hypothesis; for otherwise the
observed fact could not, as it does, overtopple the great theory
which collides with it. Our question becomes: Is there a
rational knowledge transcending science? This question we
shall answer aflfcnatively, but not in Hegel’s sense — ^there is no
rational knowledge of the universe, comprehended in its
eternal design.

We have not yet mentioned a certain aspect of dialectical
philosophy which is what gives to this movement its present
hold over the public mind. The modem intellect is now passing
through a great metamorphosis, a change so profound, and in
its symptoms so critical, that we may wonder whether the
crisis will be successfully endured. We may indicate the nature
of this change by saying that it is the transition from a spatial
to a temporal orientation upon fact. The development of
evolutionary science, and also perhaps the physical theory of
relativity, give some indication of this profound reorientation
of thought; and the popular appeal of dialectical philosophy is
due to the popular assumption, partly correct but partly mis-
taken, that dialectical philosophy is an evolutionary doctrine,
depicting the course of nature as it has evolved in historical
time. We shall not be able to deal at length with this question
here — ^that would require a separate volume; but we must stress
the equivocal character of the dialectic, in its presentation of
an “evolution” which at once is and is not a temporal progress.
The dialectic requires us to conceive of an “evolution” which
is fuUy completed, yet which eternally goes on,

Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all make tise of the w< j£ d ^ ^o-

DIALECnCAL IDEALISM

373

of being, and suggests a serial emergence of inorganic, organic,
and human nature. One might in fact regard dialectical
philosophy as an impossible and disingenuous effort to alErm
evolution implicitly, even while denying it explicitly. We are
asked to conceive of nature “as if’ nature had evolved, even
while denying its evolution. Reality, says the dialectician, can
be understood only as a process of evolution; yet because the
evolution is that of a timeless thought or reason, it is not a
temporal nor an historical evolution. The evolution must be
supposed eternally completed and eternally self-sustaining.
The evolutionary process does not newly create, it only re-
stores what eternally is. The dialectic really restates Neopla-
tonic philosophy; and it compels us to face the question
whether nature is in fact an eternal re-creation of this sort, or
a temporal creation still generating new species. If Darwin was
right, and if species originate in rime, the dialectic has no basis
in fact. (It might be sdll defended, perhaps, on the curious sup-
position that animals and men always existed somewhere, on
other planets or worlds, before they emerged on earth.)

But, in the writings of the dialecticians, this disingenuous
“evolutionism” seems to lose its equivocal character when the
last stages of dialectic, which ded with human society, are
reached. In his socid didecric, Hegel drops the pretense of
etemdism, and boldly outlines in didecricd terms the historicd
devdopment of human government. He understands by human
progress the long pursuit and achievement of liberty, which he
defines as the perfect adjustment of the individud and the
state. This part of the didecric is given separate treatment, in a
work frankly entitled Philosophy of History-, and it was this
socid application which interested the general public, and which
led to large appropriation of Hegel’s thought. Hegel sketches
at considerable length the rise of the state, in the form of an
absolute despotism such as that of ancient China; and he follows
its didecricd progress through Hindu anarchy, oriental empire,
the Greek and Roman republics, Roman empire, medievd

DIALECTICAL IDEALISM

375

dialectical interpretation of histoiy. We will not agree that the
individual finds his whole self-realization in the exercise of his
functions as a national citizen. We will not agree that the state
has a “reality” equal or superior to that of the individual, nor
that the state should have absolute control of education, reli-
gion, and every cultural exercise. We vdll not accept the
totalitarian principles, nor the state-worship, which are implicit
in Hegel’s political theory. Nor will we accept one very large
implication of this political interpretation of history, namely
that human progress has been advanced exclusively or even
rrrtcrily through war. Hegel teaches that the cosmic mecha-
by which the succession of dominant cultures generates
itself, is that of civic dissension and militant conquest. In spite
of his idealistic homage to Absolute Mind or Spirit, Hegel pre-
sents the evolution of human society in terms which make of
it a very militaristic, material, and unspiiitual pursuit of power.

It is unfortunate that so gifted an intellect should have been
circumstanced and conditioned as was that of Hegel. Hegel
looked to Prussia to unify Germany, and to support the new
German nation against the pressure of its European neighbors.
He became thereby, in spite of his liberal inclinations, the chief
intellectual spokesman of the reactionary movement which
followed the debacle of the French revolution. The totalitarian
“theory of the state,” by which Hegel intended to make the
unity and security of Germany the controlling objective of
every German and the ruling principle of German life, did in
fact guide Germany through several aggressive wars and to
enormous power; but the final issue of this teaching is political
collapse and moral rum. Unfortunately, the extreme national-
ism which engenders, and which is again fostered by, this
“theory of the state” has spread to every people. The imme-
diate intention of the Hegelian political realism is to support
unjust privilege, by attributing to those actually in political
control, the de facto government, a mystical identity w ith the
“spirit” of the people and a sanctified power.

MALECnCAI, TOEAUSM 377

3. The Science of Ethics, trans. A. E Kroeger. London,

K. Paul, Trench, Truber and Ojmpany, 1897.

There are studies of Fichte in English by Adamson, Everett,
Thompson, Talbot, Royce (in The Spirit of Modem Philos-
ophy, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1899),
Pringle-Pattison (in From Krnit to Hegel, listed below).

4. Mead, G. H., Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Cen-

tury. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1936.

5. Pringle-Pattison, A. S., from Kant to Hegel. New York, G. E.

Steckert and Company, 1924.

6. Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie.

New York, The Macmillan Company, 1931.

7. Science of Logfc, trans. W. H. Johnston and L- G.

Struthers. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1929.

8. Logic of World and Idea, trans. Macran. London and

New York, Oxford University Press, 1929.

9. “Logic and Philosophy of Mind,” trans. W. Wallace,

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. London and
New York, Oxford University Press, 1892,

10. Introduction to the Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. B.

Bosanquet. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 192 1.

11. Philosophy of History, trans. J, Sibree. New York,

Colonial Press, 1902.

12. Loewenberg, J., Hegel: Selections. New York, Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1929.

13. Mure, G. R. C., An Introduction to Hegel. London and New

York, Oxford University Press, 1940.

14. Stace, W. Y., The Philosophy of Hegel. New York, The Mac-

millan Company, 1924.

15. Croce, B., What is Living and Dead in the Philosophy of

Hegel, trans. D. Ainslee. London, The Macmillan Company,
1915.

There are also studies in English of the Hegelian metaphysics
and epistemology by J. M. E. McTaggart and H. A.
Pritchard.

1 6. Hobhouse, L. T., The Mztsph'jslcd Theory of the State. New

York, The Macmillan Company, 1918.

17. Foster, M. B., The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel.

London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1935.

20

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

It is perhaps a good sign, indicating a grovptng
realism, that the contemporary mind entertains in
dialectical philosophy a faith which, although it proceeds from
rationalistic premises, nevertheless submits itself in the end to
the test of empirical fact. The dialectic claims to show a neces-
sary sequence in social history, a fatalistic direction discern-
ible in past history and dominating of necessity the movement
from present to future. This is to give to philosophy the role
of prophecy, and to make the power to predict our final cri-
terion of truth. One cannot consider dialectical philosophies
purely academically, without reference to the social history
which they claim to describe and foresee. This is the way
society did, does, and must go, says the dialectician; and we
are challenged to look and see whether it is in actual fact the
way society goes.

The Hegelian dialectic took the national state to be ti e
oi^an of social progress. For the impetus of progress, it looked
idealistically to the intelligence of a people, effective in its in-
tellectual elite. When we speak of history, we usually mean
political history; and Hegel only conformed to orthodox opin-
ion when he made the state the agency of social progress, this
being the implicit assumption of most historians prior to Hegel

379

DIAtECTICAL MATERIALISM

381

forces themselves. If economic fact determines political fact,
we can determine what in our society shall be economic fact.
We can regulate the national economy by means of political
action; and this is to invert the Marxist view, and to revert to
the Hegelian position. And now we perceive that political
leadership w'as never so unaware of the Marxist truth that it
omitted to secure some large control of the national economy.
Throughout all history, governments have existed primarily
for this purpose. Do not Marxists agree that any government
which fails to do this is on the way outi^ The simple truth
is that “the nation” is a political-economic system. The science
of government is neither political history nor economic science,
but political economy. What the Marxist correctly perceives
is that the economic organization of society has increasingly
overborne national boundaries, until it is no longer subject to
political control. There grew up a new and large economy
which today is world-wide. Our present convulsions are the
effort to bring this larger economy under political control.
Economic change gives rise to new political problems; but the
solution of these problems is the creation of political institutions
bringing economic change under new control. Economic activ-
ities condition political activities; and the result of political
activity is to recondition economy.

We need, accordingly, a new social science, one that can
appropriate both of the two half-truths which respectively
support the Hegelian and Marxist dialectics. This science must,
of course, undercut the error which is the dialectical method
itself. Dialectical philosophy violates the first principle of
science, which is the requirement of carnal explanation. The
dialectic, we said, arises out of the confusion of causal connec-
tion with logical implication. This is really a confusion of fact
with language — ^the very confusion which the nominalistic
founders of empirical science hoped to eradicate.

Our initial purpose here must be to do intellectual and moral
justice to the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. We

DIAUECnCAL MATERIALISM

383

ligatory upon the social scientist. Very much as Darwin trans-
formed all biological science by establishing it upon an evolu-
tionary basis, very much as Newton established physical science
upon universal laws of motion, so Marx inaugurated an em-
pirical social science when he multiplied evidence of the casual
connections relating social institutions to the social economy
which conditions them.

There is some controversy today as to whether Marx him-
self was an “economic determinist” of the radical sort, who
sees in all political and ideological fact only the manifestation
of economic process. Neither party to the controversy has
difEcnlty in finding passages in the writings of Marx to sup-
port its view. Neither party is mistaken, because Marx the
social scientist was not an “economic determinist,” whereas
Marx the dialectical philosopher of necessity was this. Marx
frequently and emphatically states the intelligible and true
thesis that economic conditions constitute the most ubiquitous,
constant, and dominant factor in social history, carnally nijork-
ing upon the other political and ideological factors. Writing
as a social scientist, Marx takes causation seriously and offers
a truly scientific h)q>othesis. The economic factor could not
be a causal factor, it would have nothing to work upon, if
there did not exist in society other relatively independent fac-
tors in political and other institutions. But when Marx is writ-
ing as a dialectician he foregoes causal explanation in order to
indulge in dialectical or “logical” explanation; and now the
economic pattern becomes not merely the essential and domi-
nant factor which it in fact is, but the constitutive and sub-
stantial Being of society, manifesting itself indifferently in
economic, political, ideological and other forms. Here we
relinquish the causal analysis of science, in order to pursue
rationalistic metaphysics with its pseudological explanations.

If we reflect upon this contrast of Marx the scientist with
Alarx the rationalist, we shall discover the radical confusion
of mind which generated dialectical philcsorhy, and which

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 385

authoritative social theory comparable with physical theory.
It is because of this paucity of established social theory that we
have recourse to social history; for we correctly conclude that
the course of history provided by the responsible historian
indicates causal processes which the theorist has not yet
elucidated and defined. Social scientists are at present divided
into two groups, one of sociologists devoted to social theory,
and one of historians seeking to enlarge history. What we need
today is greater cooperation between social theorists and social
historians. This cooperation will scarcely be smooth and fruit-
ful without clear understanding of the relationship between
social theory and social history. Should sociology swallow up
historical science, the historian becoming a collector of hi^
torical data useful to the social theorist? Or is history an in-
dependent study, proceeding without the help of theoretical
guidance, and providing real knowledge of social process in
spite of its nontheoretical character?

The distinction between social history and social theory lies
in their respective uses of causal explanation. Both provide
causal explanation; but the theorist explains the causal sequence
of events as the manifestation of some known general principle,
whereas the historian discovers causal connections to exist
among particular events, whether or not the causal sequence
illustrates some general principle. We meet here once again
the ancient question which divides the rationalist and the
empiricist: Do general laws actually cause particular events to
emerge as they do? Or is all causation particular causation, the
so-called “laws” being only our summaries of many observed
particular causations? Be it observed that there is no quarrel
between the theorist and the historian on this point. Both agree,
as all ^ientists today agree, that “causation” means particular
causation, and that generalization only discovers shnilarities
among particul^ causal sequences. There is no “law” which
necessitates particulars to be what they are and to act as they
do. But the theorist is interested in particular events insofar as

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

387

torical hypothesis advanced by Marx, describing how the
economic processes of medieval and modem society did in fact
help to determine political and other history. We may dis-
tinguish Marx the scientist from Marx the dialectician, and
judge his tremendous historical hypothesis impartially, taking
it out of rationalistic polemics into empirical science, where it
can be confirmed or disproved by factual evidence.

Marx took his communistic principles from post-Napoleonic
France. His reading of European history was influenced by his
long sojourn in industrialized England. But he was still condi-
tioned in his thought by his earlier life in Germany, and as
his thought matured, it took a form directly antithetical, and
therefore in its largest character similar, to that of Hegel.
Marx, it must never be forgotten, w'as a Hegelian. Hegel had
conceived history to be a drama centered in the political evolu-
tion of government; and Marx never really rejects this political
orientation. But Hegel had conceived only of a national state
controlled by a prmleged intellectual elite and advancing by
way of national expansion; and this political orthodoxy had
made him the spokesman of world-wide reaction against the
universalistic principles of republicanism. Marx challenged this
intellectual Goliath; and to defeat Hegel on his own ground
he accepted HegeFs dialectical premises and also his political
orientation, diverging in order to place the ultimate controls of
political history in the people instead of in a privileged elite.
This was the primary aim, we may perhaps agree, of the Marxist
doctrine. Marx wished to show that it is the actual labor of
the worker in the field or the shop, something he called the
“mode of production,” that finally dominates all economic,
pclitical. and intellectual life.

The rationalist, like the Aristotelian philosopher, must radi-
cally distinguish the essential form of a thing from the non-
essential matter which it informs. The essential form of a thing
is ultimately the universe working in that thing, and con-
trolling its development and destiny. For Hegel, the essence

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 389

an increase of population, and that this is good. We must still
observe that the mode of production, although it may condi-
tion every social institution, is only one of many factors.
Ciarist Russia with its serfdom, early New England with its
freehold farms, and the colonial South with its slave plantations
were all agricultural societies; yet how different their political
patterns! Twentieth-century Russia, Germany, and the United
States are all industrialized; yet how different their govern-
ments! Marx confused the fact that economic activities condi-
tion political activities with the supposition that economic form
(the dominant mode of production) detennines political form
(the constitution of a society). This supposition cannot be
defended. Liberty and tyranny are both possible in every so-
ciety, whatever its economic mode of production. Economic
progress does not necessarily entail political progress.

Marx was misled by the old fallacy of a necessary human
progress. This fallacy is a rationalistic misstatement of the
truth that there has in fact been much human progress, both
economic and political. Economic progress is increased eco-
nomic efficiency, which may be measured by the weight of
product produced by one hour of human labor. This mightily
increases as we move from agricultural to industrial society.
There has been great economic progress. Political progress
should be measured by the degree to which each and every
individual participates in government, thus securing due con-
trol both of his individual economy and of the political econ-
omy. There has also been politicd progress. But there is no
necessary relation between economic progress and political
progress, nor is there any necessary progress of any sort.
Russia by political means advances the economic progress of
its vast domain, Germany by political means would have kept
much of Europe agricultural. It is very clear to the discerning
historian that the history of modem civilization is primarily
the story of how economic and political progress have stimu-
lated each other, and how failures of political progress have

DULECriCAL MATERIALISM

391

which tries to see in physical necesity itself a god in disguise,
taking Protean shape in biological, psychological, sociological,
or other necessity. But in the twentieth century, when modem
science has long been freed from its rationalistic swaddling
clothes, and when every scientist and every intelligent and in-
formed person knows that physical and other scientific “laws”
are not universal natural necessities, but only our latest sum-
maries of observed similarities, this residue of medieval ration-
alism has no place. We cannot change the physical habits of
astronomical nature, and so we must accept its “laws”; but we
certainly can change, and every day do change, the social
habits of men and women. We do this by means of legislation,
education, example, and persuasion. Society knows no law
which it does not make itself, except that utter moral law
which is the rule of all that exists, and which we have yet to
elucidate.

We have considered dialectical materialism only in its social
application, and have not referred to its larger doctrine, pro-
fessedly showing how material being by dialectical necessity
proceeds to unfold its implicit content of physical, organic,
and, finally, social pattern. Nor shall we summarize this larger
doctrine, if only because it can scarcely be said to exist, neither
Marx nor any authoritative Marxist having troubled to elab-
orate it. Its materialism is a vague verbal gesture, dismissing
idealism. The gesture is necessarily vague, because the concept
of dialectical necessity is incorrigibly idealistic in its confusion
of causal connection with logic^ explanation. Marx seems to
have thought that his emphasis on material production re-
quired a materialistic metaphysics — as if the production of ma-
terial goods by human labor were somehow only a physical
process, and not as biological, psychological, and moral a
process as writing poetry, devising political systems, or elab-
orating rationalistic metaphysics. But further, the discussion of
contemporary materialism, including that of Marxists, would

dialectical materialism

393

Notes for Further Reading

1. Marx, K., Capital^ trans. Aveling. New York, Charles Scribner’s

Sons, 1925.

2. Capitaly etc.y ed. M, Eastman. New York, Modern

Library, Inc., 1932.

The Essentials of Marx, ed. A. Lee. New York, Rand

Book Store, 1931.

A Handbook of Marxismy ed. E. Bums. New York,

International Publishers Company, Inc., 1935.

5. Engels, F., Lud'wig Feuerbach and the Outcome of German

Classical Philosophy y ed. C. P. Dutt. Moscow, Cooperative
Publishing Society, and New York, International Publishers
Company, Inc., 1934.

6. Lenin, N., Materialis?n and Empirico-Criticismy trans. D. Kvitko

and S. Hook. Moscow, Cooperative Publishing Society, and
New York, International Publishers Company, Inc., 1927.

7. Lewns, J., ed. A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy. Moscow,

The Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, 1938.

8. Plekhanov, G. V., Fundamental Problem of Marxismy ed. D.

Ryazanov, trans. E. and C. Paul. London, M. Lawrence,
Ltd., 1929.

9. Bukharin, N. L, Historical Materialism. New York, Interna-

tional Publishers Company, Inc., 1925.

and others, Marxism and Modem Thoughty trans. R.

Fox, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935.

1 1. Bernstein, E., Evolutionary Socialismy trans. E. C. Harvey, New

York, B. W. Huebsch, 1909.

12. Seligman, E. R. A., The Economic Interpretation of History.

New York, Columbia University Press, 1924.

13. Lindsay, A. D., Karl Marx*s Capital London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1931.

14. Laski, H. J., Karl Marx. New York, League for Industrial

Democracy, 1933.

15. Hook, S., From Hegel to Marx. New York, Reynal and Hitch-

cock, Inc., 1936.

16. Cole, G. D. H., What Marx Really Meant. New York, Alfred

A. Knopf, 1934.

17. Haldane, J. B. S., The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences.

New York, Random House, Inc., 1939.

21

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

^^VER MUCH OF THE EARTH’s SURFACE, THE

nineteenth century was a period of economic, politi-
cal, and scientific progress such as the world had never seen.
In Europe and the continents settled by its emigrants there
was vast increase of population and of wealth. The indigenous
populations of Asia and Africa were in effect subjugated by
Europe, and not yet inclined to revolt. It was a century of
relative peace, a long lull between the world war against
Napoleon and that in which Germany would seek world
empire. Politically, it was the century of imperialism. Britain
was able to police the seas at little cost; and its power was
tolerated because its policy of free trade made its hegemony
profitable to all. The Americas and Russia were busy with
internal expansion, France had moderated its imperialistic ambi-
tions, Germany was not yet ready for its great gamble; and
so peace was had by default.

We see today that it was an interim period, a last calm be-
fore the storm which in terrible convulsion would end that
imperialistic age, and begin a new world no longer centered
in Europe, But the nineteenth century dreamed of no such
cataclysm. It looked forward to an indefinite future, in which
its pattern of life would spread to the world at large. It sup-

395

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 397

cally, as a pursuit of or special interests. The aim of

the state must be, he said, to satisfy private interests by their
union in public interests, and to educate its citizens by per-
suading them of this identity between private and public in-
terests. The character of the individual, he taught, is determined
wholly by the social environment; and moral character should
be shaped by the state, which is thus the source of individual
morality. The best state is that which seeks “the greatest good
of the greatest number.”

This conception is almost irrelevant to democratic theory. It
defines aims which might be those of any government; but it
says nothing about the sources and controls of governmental
power- Democratic theory is distinguished from all other po-
litical theory by its location of responsibility in the moral in-
dividual, i.e. in all individuals. It is a political and moral faith,
not a psychological theory nor an ethical doctrine. Democratic
society may seek to realize through its appointed government
any specific moral end; and its objectives will vary at different
times and places. The utilitarian conception becomes definitely
antidemocratic when it is conjoined with the view that the
state is the source of individual morality. Jeremy Bentham in-
troduced Helvetius’ formula into British thought, in a utilitarian
program which demanded for government an unlimited legal
sovereignty; and he roundly repudiated the principle of natural
ri^ts. The sole test of law, Bentham argued, is its utility in
securing the general welfare. This Benthamite movement
helped to bring about the extension of democratic suffrage;
but it did this as a means necesary to the passage of legal and
other reforms, and not as an acknowledgment of democratic
principles. Following the year 1832, when conservative reac-
tion broke down, this reform group gave to Great Britain a
century of progressive and liberal leadership; but democratic
thought never fully recovered its grasp of the principle of
individual responsibility, upon which alone democracy can be
intelligibly and firmly established. Thus a century which tre-

■niE NINETEENTH CENTURY

399

the high optunism it had inherited steadily thinned and vul-
garized itself, losing its impetus, until the confused impulse to
faith was ashamed of faith, and retracted to a more honest
skepticism. Schopenhauer, who saw the beginning of this cen-
tury, was prescient of its end.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a contemporary of
Schelling and Hegel; and his greatest work, The World as Will
and as Idea, was written in i8i8 when he was thirty years old.
Yet in his thought Schopenhauer was closer to ourselves than
to his German contemporaries. Like those men, he moved from
the great Kantian criticism to a form of metaphysical idealism;
but his sojourns in France and England, together with his
wide reading, had made of him a cosmopolitan thinker whose
writings can be intelligibly rendered into any language. At
first ignored, Schopenhauer before his death received wide
recognition, and became something of a popular idol. His
direct influence was upon the general public rather than upon
professional philosophers; and this has perhaps obscured from
us how great his influence was.

His first contribution was a simplification of the Kantian
philosophy; but this simplification rather profoundly modified
Kant’s system. Kant had called space and time the two forms
of perception; and he had made causation a category of the
understanding. Schopenhauer taught that the two concepts of
^ace and time of themselves compose the concept of physical
causation, a view which finds some support in contemporary
physical theory. He concluded that the spatial-temporal-causal
pattern of fact is generated in perception alone, without help
from the understanding. What then is the imderstanding and
the scientific knowledge which it produces.^" The understand-
ing, Schopenhauer says, seeks an abstract summary or general-
ization of causal relationships immediately perceived. Percep-
tion alone provides factual truth; but the understanding pro-
vides, in science, a useful schedule or compendium of perceived
fact. With the help of this schedule, we can predict and con-

the nineteenth century

401

resistances, with other wills. All nature is this endless battle-
field of conflicting wills. What we perceive is what threatens or
supports our will-to-live. What is irrelevant to our personal
survival we do not perceive. So, after first contrasting the
falsity of systematic science with the truth of perception,
Schopenhauer now tells us that perception also is a pragmatic
and utilitarian faculty, and not an authentic, objective cogni-
tion; for our perception is the “objectification” only of our
subjective purpose, our personal will-to-live; and it reveals, con-
sequently, only a private perspective, in terms of our will or
our vital needs. Perceptual cognition is true but subjective.

This conception is close to that elaborated by Bergson early
in this century. Bergson makes science and ordinary perception
the projection into nature of our practical and vital needs. In
both thinkers there is this curious self-contradiction, that they
at once dismiss science as an instrument not intended to provide
descriptive knowledge, yet unconsciously appeal to science for
the evidence for their conclusion. Does not science, Schopen-
hauer argues, demonstrate nature to be a conflict of interacting
forces? Is not this concept of force the ground principle of
modem science? What are forces but wills, and what are
wills but forces seeking self-furtherance? But immediately,
forgetting this involuntary and illogical appeal to science as a
descriptive and trae portrait of nature, Schopenhauer returns
to his doctrine that natural science and theoretical philosophy
only depict our personal perspective upon nature, which is de-
termined by our private character and needs.

Thus the will, after all, although it is noumenal or real, pro-
vides no knowledge but only useful illusion — ^useful to the
amoral, wholly egoistic will-to-live, which seeks its own fur-
therance against all other wills. This skeptical conclusion ex-
presses the profound pessimism which is rightly attributed to
Schopenhauer and which was widely inculcated by his writ-
ings. But Schopenhauer himself seeks to transcend this skepti-
cism and pessimism. We have, he says, a third faculty, one

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

403

tradictions spring from vacillation with respect to natural
science. Science is sometimes abruptly rejected as error, some-
times used to establish Schopenhauer’s own doctrine. These
inconsistencies might be overcome, perhaps, if we allowed
biological science, rather than physical theory, to represent
natu^ science. Schopenhauer, like Kant, identifies natural
science with physical science; but his emphasis upon the will-
to-survive, upon specific form, and upon the individual’s self-
sacrifice to the needs of its species suggests the initial step
toward a new approach to natural process. The complete re-
moval of Schopenhauer’s contradictions, however, would be
effected only by a study explaining the essential and funda-
mental role of aesthetic apprehension in all science, physics as
well as biology — ^it would require, that is to say, the successful
rewriting of Kant’s third Critique.

Schopenhauer’s writings helped to propagate the voluntar-
ism, the anti-mtellectual pragmatism, and the vague aestheticism
which ran under the surface of nineteenth-century thought, to
erupt in explicit end extreme forms in our own century. Like
Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, Schopenhauer helped to widen a
growing disruption in the modem mind. Fichte set philosophy
against science; Hegel set people against people; Marx set
class against class; and Schopenhauer now sets art against
science, and the will-to-live against the disinterested intellect.
What was the source of this unhappy division of the human
mind against itself.^ A fatal malcontent inspires these philoso-
phies. In the cases of Fichte and Hegel, this malaise comes to
light only in the destructive political results of their teaching;
but in ^hopenhauer, it is conscious and explicit. From this
world, with its unholy straggle for survival and power, he
intimates, we find release only in complete abnegation of the
will-to-live, t.e. in death. Even more strange, from the pen of
this worldly cosmopolitan aesthete, is the intimation that salva-
tion lies in the sacrifice of the individual for his kind, which is
a sort of atonement for the sin that is the world. The other-

the nineteenth century 405

From this subjectivistic fantasy he advanced to a legai^liC or
metaphysical stage, in which absolute principles or “laws”
were supposed to rule over nature. Today, at last, men recog-
nize the subjectivism of these philosophies which seek vainly
to penetrate through appearances to “reality.” Men now accept
sensible appearances, or phenomena, as the sum of knowledge,
and seek only to classify the regular sequences observable
among phenomena. Awareness of such uniformities permits
calculated prediction, giving to man some control over natural
occurrence; and with ultimate knowledge he may now dis-
pense. This is Comte’s ■posithnsm.

In truth, this modest and empirical estimate of human knowl-
edge is largely window dressing, intended to attract the scien-
tific mind and to make formal renunciation of the older and
now discredited scholastic metaphysics. Comte’s positivism is
really supported by unconscious metaphysical assumptions.
This metaphysical framework makes its appearance as a classi-
fication of the sciences. The sciences naturally fall, Comte
points out, into a definite sequence, proceeding from the mathe-
matical sciences, through the physical and biological sciences,
to the sciences which deal with man and society. The sciences
antecedent in this order are presupposed in and instrumental to
those which follow; and the sciences accordingly culminate
in sociology, which telescopes into its theory all the principles
of the other sciences. Because of this relationship, the sciences
become more complex and difficult as we proceed in this order,
from mathematics to sociology; and this is why they were
historically developed in this order. Comte regarded himself
as the originator of empirical sociology. He may have invented
the name; but his social analyds is less empirical and scientific
than that of many of his predecessors.

As we have seen, this “order of the sciences” reflects primarily
the fact of natural evolution on this planet. Comte was no
evolutionist. For him, consequently, the order of the sciences
constituted an ultimate metaphysical fact, not to be empirically

the nineteenth centhry

407

“social statics” and “social d3mamics.” In physical science
this division into statics and dynamics has meaning. Physical
statics deals with stresses in bodies at rest, whereas physical
dynamics is the study of bodies in motion; and the two
disciplines apply the same basic principles to two sorts of
physical situation. This distinction cannot be simply translated
to sociology. What Comte calls “social statics” is a study
modeled on physical dynamics. It seeks a social theory defining
the constants always and everywhere conserved through social
change. What he calls “social dynamics” is really an historical
study of human progress, in no way analogous to phyacal
dynamics. This error is worth noting, because it makes unusu-
ally explicit the long confusion which has obscured our con-
ceptions of social and natural evolution. Comte correctly dis-
tinguishes the historical study of human progress from the
theoretical study which defines the social structure which is
supposedly preserved throughout this evolution; but he in-
correctly conceives of these two studies, respectively historical
and theoretical, as the two halves of a single theoretical science
analogous with theoretical physics. This is only another version
of the error committed by Hegel in his dialectic. The dialectic
“progresses” from a beginning to an end, like a history or an
evolution; yet it claims to be a theoretical system, defining the
unchanging and absolute structure of the world. We will return
to this problem in our study of evolutionary doctrine.

We have already mentioned Gimte’s outline of man’s in-
tellectual evolution as proceeding through three st^es, from
animistic mythology through metaphysical speculation to
positivistic science. His elaboration of this doctrine is sugges-
tive; it is, in fact, the prototype of the social dialectic of Marx.
Each stage, Cbmte says, produces its characteristic social insti-
nitions. The earliest theological stage is marked by the develop-
ment of ecclesiastical and military institutions; the metaph 5 rsical
stage is characterized by the establishment of constitutional
governments and of legalistic forms of social control. We sdU

the nineteenth century 409

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) exhibits this same failure.
Spencer was long regarded in English-speaking countries as
the chief philosophical exponent of evolutionary doctrine. In
truth he belongs to the early nineteenth century, with Hegel
and Comte, in his explanation of evolutionary facts in terms of
nonevolutionary principles. His extensive system, elaborated
in a small library of volumes the writing of which occupied his
long life, reveals his dogmatic and unempirical method, which
resembles that of Hegel in its mechanical imposition of a verbal
formula upon the diverse materials provided by the special
sciences. He is like Comte, however, in his ostensible repudia-
tion of metaphysics. He prefaces his system with a call to
agnosticism, warning us not to pursue knowledge of the
“Absolute,” which is beyond human comprehension. We are
limited to knowledge of phenomena and their uniformities.
But having thus eliminated the word “absolute,” Spencer turns
to the construction of a universalistic metaphysics which is
absolutisdc in all but name, and which closely parallels the
dialectical metaphysics. There are, he says, a number of a priori
and absolute principles involved in our recognition of “phe-
nomena”; and the most important of these is the principle of
necessary development, according to which matter proceeds
to its spatial reorganization by an inherent necessity, from the
most simple physical patterns to increasingly complex in-
organic, organic, and psychological patterns. The sciences, ar-
ranged in their proper order, exhibit the successive stages of
this material development of nature; and all Spencer need do,
or does, is to present the many concepts of inorganic, organic,
and human science as arising from this “necessity,” under
which “matter” labors, progressively to complicate its spatial
pattern. It need scarcely be pointed out that this Spencerian
“matter” corresponds in no way to what modern science has
understood by this word. The reader will perceive Spencer’s
revival here of the Aristotelian and scholastic concept of matter,
which was defined as the potentiality to realize form; but the

the nineteenth centory 41 r

application of a more general ethical theory; and in his ethical
writings, Mill remained vacillating and inconclusive. He was
not satisfied with the utilitarianism of his father and Bentham;
yet he seriously considered no alternative, and his effort to
modify its hedonistic axioms only left them meaningless and
inapplicable. Pleasure is the objective of every human act, he
hedonistically agreed, and the good is therefore to be defined
by a hedonistic calculus, correctly calculating the maximum
jaim of accessible pleasures. He insisted, however, that pleasures
must be estimated qualitatively, as well as quantitatively. Mill,
and after him other hedonists, never clearly perceived that a
rational calculation of pleasures — and still more, of course, a
qualitative estimate of pleasures as higher or lower — appeals
to ethical criteria lying beyond the immediate feeling of pleas-
ure. Assuming that pleasure is the object of an instinctive and
rightful urge, how shall man direct and control this instinctive
pursuit of pleasure, to gain from it its optimum outcome?
Even to ask this question involves the postulation of some
intellectual ethical criterion over and above that of pleas-
urableness.

A similar vacillation appears in his political writings. Mill
supported the consequences which flow from the principle of
i nalienab le rights; yet he feared what might result from the
full application of this principle. His defense of minorities, for
example, was motivated by his fear that an electoral majority
might oppress minorities. Such half-hearted allegiance to demo-
cratic principles did not strengthen liberalism. British liberalism
was largely a creation of the antimonarchical but still aristo-
cratic WWg party, which supported an extension of political
suffrage to gain popular support against the Tory opposition.
A genuine liberalism (and we should not let the inadequacies
of earlier liberals rob us of this word) is established upon
faith in the individual man, and is incompatible with fear of
“the masses” and with the very concept of “the masses.”
Liberalism is our faith that the inividual human being is good.

the nineteenth century

413

the scientific analysis which is auxiliary to hypothesis. The
true method of science is the creation of hypotheses; and this
eludes definition.

Our justification for applying a generalization from past
facts to facts as yet unobserved. Mill says, rests upon the largest
generalization, which is derived from the sum total of past
generalizations. Having made many successful inductions in
special fields, we now make a general induction, stating that
nature is evidently amenable to inductive study. This largest
generalization Mill calls “the principle of the uniformity of
nature.” It was immediately pointed out that this reasoning is
circular. The specific inductions are “successful” only if we
grant their necessary applicability to unobserved fact, and this
is what needs proof. What proof is there that nature is uniform?

Mill’s teaching may be summarized as follows; Our only
problem, he assumes, is to distinguish genuinely causal se-
quences from merely casual or chance repetitions. The method
of agreement compares an observed sequence with earlier
observed sequences. The method of difference instructs us, if
abc has always been followed by def, to see whether the ab-
sence of f in the consequent does not entail the absence of ^ in
the antecedent, in which case c is presumably the cause of f.
The method of residues says that if abc is the uniform ante-
cedent of def, and ah the uniform antecedent of de, then, once
more, c is the cause of f. And the method of concormtcmt
variations tells us that where one factor varies quantitatively
with another, the two factors are probably causally connected.
The occasional admiration of a scientist for these trivial defini-
tions of “scientific method” reminds one of the surprise and
pleasure of Monsieur Jourdain, when he was assured by his
tutor that he was able to speak in prose, and indeed always did
so speak. If this is scientific method, then who is not a Newton?
“Inductive logic” has cheapened our estimate of science; and
those who would have science receive the intelligent respect
which is its due should protest this abuse in no uncertain terms.

the kineteenth centoty

415

Aristotelian metaphysics, as this was perpetuated in the scholas-
tic theology and philosophy. These modem thinkers believed
themselves to be rejecting all metaphysical speculation when
they emphatically rejected the scholastic metaphysics; yet they
unconsciously introduced new metaphysics of their own. Their
own metaphysics they disguised as a “method.” They were
unaware that every method, if it is advanced as universal in its
applicability and authoritative in its results, implies certain
absolute assumptions which provide the generative nucleus
of a body of metaphysical doctrine. Descartes and Spinoza,
who initiated the most extreme rationalism the western world
has seen, conceived themselves to be free from metaph)7sical
assumptions and to be advocating only a “method.” But simi-
larly the nominalists and empiricists, who rejected the Cartesian
along with the scholastic metaphysics, were the proponents of
a metaphysical view, resting upon absolute axioms, but dis-
guised as only scientific method. Normnalisnt asserts the abso-
lute and tdtinme reality of individual being, as observed in
particular things and occurrences; and this is a metaphysicd
affirmation. Empiricism likevnse, although it allovos only prob-
ability to its general statements, makes observed particular fact
the ultimate and sufficient criterion of truth; and this is to
subscribe to the nommdistic axiom. But it has never been per-
ceived voith sufficient clarity that the empirical realism •which
is modem science, like the rationalistic realism vohich oBas
Greek science, constitutes a metaphysics. We need not vjonder
at the gyc-wing confusion of empirical thinkers •who •were not
arware of their o'wn first principles, presupposed in all their
method.

As empirical thought bogged down into confusion and
triviality, there inevitably appeared a reaction against it, and a
new appreciation of the clarity and forthrightness of ration-
alistic thinkers who openly confessed to their metaphysical
postulates. We caimot follow nineteenth-century thought
through aU of its many movements; but we may note its

the nineteenth century

417

knowledge of universal natural principles, is not invalidated
by criticism of his atomistic psychology. But Green assumed
that his discovery of flaws unessential to Hume’s central argu-
ment invalidated Hume’s whole conclusion; and he returns
with a leap to an absolute, universalistic, and idealistic meta-
physics. Because the elements of experience are not isolated
atoms, he concludes that a perfected experience contains no
separations, no fragmentary character, no elements of any sort.
The whole of experience, he claims, is somehow inherent in
every part of experience. The whole mind, with its whole
knowledge, informs our every judgment. Yet having so argued.
Green must retreat in order to acknowledge the limitations of
human knowledge, the lapses of mind, the lacunae and errors
of human experience. It is not your or my imperfect mind,
he allows, which has this perfect organization and this trans-
parent wholeness and unity. But such is Absolute Mind, of
which our minds are imperfect and fragmentary parts, and of
which all fact is the infinite and unified content. Similarly,
our particular actions and our individual wills are the real
modes of a universal, eternal, and absolute Will. Reality is an
organized Whole; and in organized human society we intend,
so far as our limited and modal natture allows, a proper sub-
jection of our individual will to the absolute Will which is God.

The two most notable British exponents of absolute idealism
were Bradley and Bosanquet. Francis H. Bradley (1846-1924)
was the profounder of the two. Because he probed deep, he
brought again to the surface of thought the insoluble problems
which Kant had acknowledged and clearly marked, but which
Kant’s absolutisdc successors had overridden. Bradley resur-
rects, and remains inextricably caught in, those antinomies or
self-contradictions which Kant had shown to be latent in ab-
solute and universal metaphysics. How, Bradley inquires,
can the limited human mind, analyzing a finite experience, hope
to establish principles of universal and eternal validity? If
Reality, as absolute idealism implies, is an organic Whole, to

the nineteenth century 419

now a whale.” If we err, and say, “The whale is a fish,” when
better acquaintance would classify it as a mammal, our error is
one of extent, not of intent. Wider experience would classify
the whale as a mammal; but in the context of a narrower ex-
perience, the whale is truly a fish. Bosanquet is insisting here
that our knowledge of nature is in sort geographical, and that
the extension of science by new and often strange hypotheses
does not really discredit the older and narrower hypotheses
which are displaced. It was true that the sun moves round the
earth; it is true that the earth moves round the sun. Some such
view, apparently self-contradictory, is implied in every absolute
and nonempirical realism; for this doctrine ultimately requires
the literal identity of ideas with things.

Idealistic philosophers made use of a distinction between
extemd and internal relations. If the relations discovered by
the intellect are “external” to the things related, then some of
the relations of a thing may be correctly knovm even while we
are ignorant of others. Thus you may know that your friend
has an older brother, but be unaware that he has a younger
sister. If all relations are “internal,” however, then real ac-
quaintance with anything, i.e. knowledge of its character, in-
cludes knowledge of all its relations. Knowing your friend,
you know he has a aster. It is clear, perhaps, that for common
sense and empirical science, the distinction between external
and internal relations cannot be ultimate. We proceed as if re-
lations were external, discovering now this and now that causal
or other connection, as best we can. It is in the light of these
causal relations, however, that we progressively define the
character of a thing, so that the relations which initially were
external are finally internal. Thus we study a salt, discern its
color, its specific crystalline form, etc.; but we fail to determine
from these data its solubility. We discover by experiment that
it dissolves in any acid; and from this “external” relationship
we learn something of its internal constitution, so that the re-
lation becomes “intemaL” The absolute idealist holds all rela-

the nineteenth century

42 X

ingly than any of his critics the inherent weakness of absolute
idealism. But discussion of this new realism belongs to our
review of contemporary thought.

Looking back over this summary of nineteenth-century
philosophy, we find little that is important and philosophically
new. The thinker rings the changes of eighteenth-century
thought, usually with less vitality than his more creative pred-
ecessors. Where reflection starts from Kant, there is a fatal
development of “Neo-Fichteans,” “Neo-Schellings,” and “Neo-
Hegelians.” Where the thinker starts from Hume, he may
either be led to discover Kant, or flounder into a verbal posi-
tivism that really returns to a rationalistic metaphysics dis-
guised as an absolutistic “methodology.” There were at least
two good reasons for this intellectual failture. The first was that
the problem which faced this age baffled the inquirer. Mathe-
matical physics, loyal to the mechanical principles of the New-
tonian physics, seemed to indicate the dependence of science
upon absolute mathematical axioms; and this discouraged a
radical and consistent empiricism; yet, on the other hand,
science everywhere, no less in physical inquiry than elsewhere,
proceeded from observed data to large hypothesis, and in this
way affirmed its empirical faith in the ultimacy of particular
fact. The nineteenth century lacked the data dlowing escape
from this deadlock; and the profoundest and only completely
honest thinkers were, perhaps, those who saw this problem as
Kant had seen it, and accepted Kant’s phenomenalism or posi-
tivism with respect to natural knowledge, and his noumendism
or moral realism with respect to action. Fortunately the twen-
tieth century was to provide the data freeing human thought
from this impasse.

The other reason for the failure of philosophical genius was
the shift of public interest from philosophy to science, and,
after the mid-century, to the mind-shattering hypothesis of
evolution. It was in empirical inquiry that the genius of the
nineteenth century exhibited its power. Never had there been

the nineteenth century 423

English Utilitarianism, New York, The Macmillan Com-
pany, 1902).

7. Spencer, H., Works available in most libraries. See especially

his First Prmciples, New York, D. Appleton-Century, and
his “preface” to Collin’s Epitome of Spencer’s Philosophy.

8. Sidgwick, H., The Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau.

New York, The Macmillan Company, 1902.

9. Ward, J., Naturalism and Apiosticism. London, A. and C

Black, 1915.

10. Watson, W., Comte, Mill, and Spencer. Glasgow, J. Maclehose
and Sons, 1895.

Other studies of Spencer by Hudson, Macpherson, Royce,
Taylor, Thompson, Harrison.

n. Green, T. H., “Introduction to Hume,” in Treatise on Human
Nature, David Hume, London and New York, Longmans,
Green and Company, 1875.

12. Prolegomena to Ethics. London and New York, Oxford

University Press, 1883.

ij. Principles of Political Obligation. Boston, Longmans,

Green and Company, 1895.

Studies of Green by Fairbrother, Johnson, Sidgwick, Muir-
head (in The Service of the State, Man versus the State as a
Present Issue, London, G. Allen and Unwin), Ritchie (in
Prmciples of State Interference, London, Social Science
Series, 1891), MacCunn {op. cit.).

14. Bradley, F. H., Principles of Logic. London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1883.

15. Bradley, F. H., Appearance and Reality. New York, The Mac-

millan Company, 1902.

16. Essays on Truth and Reality. London and New York,

Oxford University Press, 1914.

17. Rashdall, H., The Metaphysics of Bradley. London, Gerald

Duckworth and Company.

18. Bosanquet, B., The Principle of Individuality and V,alue. New

York, The Macmillan Company, 1912.

19. The Value and Destiny of the Individttal. New York,

The Macmillan Company, 1913.

20. The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy,

New York, The Macmillan Company, 1921.

22 THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION
IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

In ANTiQumr, anaxtmander and empedocles
advanced evolutionary hypotheses which were evi-
dently based upon study of the organic species. Early Greek
science was as much concerned to understand the generation
or evolution of nature as to learn something of the permanent
structure of nature. Science was usually presented, indeed, as
an inquiry into the -physis, i.e. into the coming-to-be or gen-
eration of nature. Today the word “physical” carries no such
evolutionary connotation, and this change of meaning testifid j
to a radical change of interest and outlook. Perhaps by Pytha-#
oras, certainly by Parmenides and Plato, scientific interest d(sl
focused upon the constant structure or morphology of n!ho^
and the historical or evolutionary character of natureer'"
henceforth neglected. This neglect of natural history w; ^
quired by the ever clearer distincdon of theoretical or sya^^
atic knowledge from more casual knowledge, which dii* ^
aim at theoretical unity; and it was encouraged by the ir^f; ’
ing dependence of analysis upon mathematical the-^1*^*^^
other words, the development of mathematical
vented the development of a science centered upoir^^^S^'^^^

the concept of evolution in science and philosophy 427

appreciation finally became explicit in the concept of human
progress. Although given a name only in the late eighteenth
century, the concept of progress underlay and supported the
whole development of modem science and society. Science
was conceived to be the intellectual wedge which opened the
way to political and other progress; and no institution nor
system Im yet been able to rob modem man of this optimistic
oudook upon an expanding and progressive future.

But it was seldom seen, and it stiU is inadequately understood,
that this conception of human progress commits us to a tem-
poralistic or historical conception of nature at large. Quite
illogically — if by “law” we refer to the fixed and definable
principles of nature — ^men spoke of a “law of progress.” By an
inherent natural necessity, said the first advocates of progress,
man has continuously progressed in wisdom, goodness, and
power. This is, of course, untrae. Human decline is unfor-
tunately as evident as human progress; and it is clear that
progress depends first upon the human will to progress, and
ultimately upon a number of factors into the nature of which
we would do well to inquire.

The philosophical systems elaborated during the kte eight-
eenth and early nineteenth century show a curious half-aware-
ness of history, a sort of effort to accept, without explicitly
acknowledging, their mental orientation upon histoti(^ and
evolutionary fact. We have seen how the post-Kantian dia^
lectidans, and the systems of Comte and Spencer, tried to d^*
justice to the largest consequences of natural evolution withoV^
accepting the hypothesis of evolution itself. And, in a deer
manner, the whole development of thought from Hume
Kant onwards prepared the way for an evolutionary view
nature. Both Hume and Kant made time, not space, the w?
and mott ultimate category of knowledge. Reiity, this
mean, is in the last resort a linear, progressive sort of 1 "'^’ith
But aitbongh these two thinkers were somewhat skeptic^’^^s®^'^®
ceming theoretical knowledge, they did not explic^o^offic^^

the concept of evolution in science and philosophy

429

This Aristotelian doctrine, either directly or through its in-
corporation into Platonism, soon elevated the fixity of species
into a primary dogma of the human intellect.

For ourselves, recently emancipated from this dogma, even
a cursory study of the species of plant and animal life points to
the fact of organic evolution. Why else should the species fall
into a natural classification which takes on the form of a
genealogical tree? By the close of the eighteenth century, there
was ample and conclusive evidence for the hypothesis of
geologic and organic evolutioiL Yet the hypothesis was stoutly
resisted or even contemptuously dismissed, often by sincere
and competent scientists. These irreconcilables felt, obscurely
but correctly, that the evolutionary hypothesis contravened
certain fundamental assumptions accepted by earlier science;
and they feared that it would discredit the whole achievement
of science, and invalidate its method. So they rebuked or ig-
nored Lamarck, who first gathered the evidence for evolution
into a unified and really conclusive argument. Condemnation
of the Lamarckian hypothesis was the easier, because Lamarck
gave to his exposition an Aristotelian and vitalistic interpreta-
tion. The mutation of species, he said, is the consequence or
manifestation of a vital force inherent in the organism, which
in its pursuit of existence may develop new characters trans-
mitted to its progeny. The biologist rejected this view, because
it implied that organic changes are self-caused. This would
violate the principle basic to mechanistic causal analysis, which
holds all change to be reaction to some external action or
condition.

Half a century later, in 1859, the scientific world generally
applauded the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of
Species, although there persisted some minor opposition to its
teaching. During the interval between Lamarck and Darwin,
geologists like Lyell and Hutton had familarized scientists with
the evidence provided by fossil remains of the progressive
evolution of the earth’s surface. Darwin used this geological

the concept of evolution in science and philosophy 433

velopment was distinguished by its emphatic aflSrmation of the
reality of individual being and the ultimacy of particular fact,
and by its opposition to a rationalism which affirmed the reality
of universal being and the absoluteness of universal principles.
To say that individual being is real is to say that individual
being is effective, or truly and finally determinative of what
happens in the world. And to say that universals are abstrac-
tions is to say that universal being is ineffective, unreal, ficti-
tious. But the structural principles, supposedly effective in
keeping ^ecies fixed, were universal principles, definitive some-
how of universal being; and if there is no universal being, the
structural principles are not effective, and we know of nothing
which might fixate the species and types of things. To be con-
sistent, we must attribute this mutability of specific form also
to inorganic nature. We cannot conceive of organic evolution
falfing place in a nonevolving cosmos. Yet against all this reas-
oning is the argument that science, even an historical or evolu-
tionary science, seems to depend upon the affirmation of con-
stants, structural principles, theoretical formulatitHis — ^in a
word some form and some degree of realistic rationalism. A
nature that is exclusively individual, wholly unspecific, and
incorrigibly fluent could never, it would seem, be known nor
intellectually vmderstood.

We will engage this problem in our concluding chapter.
Now we turn to certain philosophical speculations which are
important not for their solution of the problem, but for their
growing rect^niticm of it, and for their oversharp statement
of it.

Only in the closing decade of the nineteenth century do we
find thinkers who perceived the more radical implications of
evolutionary science. One of the first of these was Nietzsche.
Friedrich Nietzsche ( 1844-1900) is in ill repute today, at least
in democratic society; for he was the proponent of the doc-
trine of the supermm, a doctrine which undoubtedly helped to
inspire the creators of Nazi Germany. It might be argued that

THE OONCEirr OP EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

4J5

But he gives the doctrine an evolutionary twist, in that he
portrays the heroic and aristocratic radividual as the protagonist
of a new mutation of the human species, bringing into existence
the “superman.” We remember how Schopenhauer depicted
sexual passion as the involuntary servitude of the individual to
the ends of the species. Now Nietzsche, a generation after
Darwin, suggests that the amoral “hero” enthrones himself in
order to establish a new species, and to fulfil the design of a
cosmic evolution.

To understand Nietzsche’s error, we should appreciate his
half-truth. He is telling us that the will of man is the dynamo
of his creative evolution, productive of new and higher forms
of existence. Moral insight, like scientific insight, must break
through and progressively widen the formulated codes of the
past. Morality too must evolve. We may forgive Nietzsche
his indictment of Christian civilization and his caricature of
Christian morality, when we learn what a flaccid, formalized,
sepulchral “Chrisrianity” surrounded the boy Nietzsche in
his father’s parsonage. We can also understand Nietzsche when
he sanctifies only one virtue, that of courage; for courage is
most needed by those who would themselves pursue and in
others arouse a living faith. What we cannot excuse in Nietzsche
is his moral snobbishness, his contempt for humanity. Stupid
provincialism, from which in his superficial coanopolitanism
he fled, still blinded him to all but an obscure Greek episode
of the human past. He had no large prospect upon man’s
moral progress. Nietzsche, an obscure and lonely neurotic,
spent his last years in an asylum for the mentally diseased.
That did not prevent the propagation of his equivocal gospel,
which was couched in as luminous a prose as the German lan-
guage has produced. Symptomatic of a mind diseased, perhaps,
was the cult which looked to Nietzsche for its medicine.

Nietzsche’s doctrme is philosophically noteworthy for its
affirmation of radical disaintinuity in nature. Human progress,
it implies, proceeds by inexplicable leaps from an older pattern

THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

437

donary, genetic, historical form of knowledge. The tran-
scendentalism to which Fichte and Hegel gave a rationalistic
form, and to which Schopenhauer gave an aesthetic formula-
tion, becomes in Nietzsche a sheer anti-intellectualism, a volun-
tarism unmediated and unmoderated by anything whatsoever.
The will, void of scruple and intelligible direction, must carve
its destiny. It is this sheer voluntarism, this abandonment to the
paroxysm of actio.n, which became the false strength and
deeper weakness of Germany. Blind to the world about it,
Germany refused all adjustment to its environment, and gave
to its neighbors the alternatives of destroying, or being de-
stroyed by, a people gone berserk. Nietzsche might have
learned from the Greeks that whom the gods would destroy
they first make mad. There is moral sanity, one and the same
forever.

A curious doctrine of Nietzsche’s, but one which casts light
upon his limitations, is his revival of the Greek cyclicism.
Everything that happens, he wrote, is the fatal return of what
has ^eady transpired an infinite number of times; and it is
the mark of the heroic superman that he can contemplate this
eternal recurrence without losing his reason. In this fantasy
we see a ccntradictcry return to the etemalistic and univcrsal-
istic outlook which in his main doctrine he emphatically re-
nounces. He intimates, that is to say, that the new insight of
the “superman” is just that comprehension of all time and
space which Plato had accorded to the reason.

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) is a philosopher of evolution
who has seized the other horn of the dilemma presented by
the fact of evolution. If we agree that nature radically evolves,
so that even the most basic structures of nature arc subject to
temporal change, shall we suppose with Nietzsche that nature
jumps by a transcendental act from one structural block in
the moving evolution to another; or shall we, as Bergson ad-
vises, make no appeal to structural knowledge, but tty instead
to understand the evolutionary progress as sheer motion, or

THE CaSCEVT OF EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHUUSOPHY 439

tiality for art. Tom in his youth between poetry and philoso-
phy, he made philosophy his career; but he allowed to poetry
its revenge, in that he used philosophical analysis to discredit
theoretical knowledge in the interest of art and aesthetic in-
tuition.

This invidious teaching was not without antecedents in post-
Kantian philosophy, which was now widespread. Bergson
gives to the post-Knntian criticism of science, especially to the
pragmatic positivism first enunciated by Schopenhauer, a new
and incisive formulation. The theoretical intellect, he writes,
is not a cognitive faculty motivated by a desire to know nature
and intent upon a faithful description of nature. The theoreti-
cal intellect serves practical ends. It developed as an agency of
survival, and its function is to provide some practical control
of our environment. Nature is incorrigibly individual, its every
item is unique and incomparable; but the theoretical intellect
gra^s only those aspects of fact which recur again and again,
and in the recurrence or prevention of which we are vkaily
interested. Bergson suggests, indeed, that the intellect does not
so much discover these constant or recurrent characters within
nature as construct than and project them into nature, therd>y
obscuring the true individual pattern of natural occurrence.
Theoretical knowledge, he concludes, really tells us tmly about
our own organic needs. It is incorrigibly subjective and de-
ceptive.

Something like this conclusion had been implicit in modern
philosophy ever since Hume and Kant attempted to etplain
how knowledge arises as the result of mental process. Bergson’s
study of this constructive process is unusually penetrating.
Earlier epistemology, he points out, had confused the category
of time with one of the three dimensions of space. Time was
conceived as a linear order of instants, by analogy with space
which was conceived to be a three-dimensional order of por-
tions. But in tmth no such homology or similarity exists be-
tween time and space, because time is irreversible. Time is every-

THE CX 3 NCEPT OF EVOLtmON IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 44I

condnuous change. Mathematical science is today equipped to
deal with the fact of continuity — ^it is able to define the contin-
uous line, surface, volume, motion, change. It is only this
mathematical grasp of continuity, indeed, that allows us to ap-
preciate and to dKcribe exactly what is discontinuous in nature.
Yet Bergson tells us that natural science replaces the continu-
ous evolution of nature by a calculating machine, made up of
jointed parts which creak and jerk in a mimicry of nature
that is caricature or satire, not truth. It is because he caricatures
theoretical science that Bergson must prefer art to science,
which is truly the greatest of human arts.

Bergson’s studies are rich in incidental insights. In his
thoughtful Matter and Mermry he compares the intellect to
a grid, which allows to enter our minds only those elements of
“pure perception” which are practically relevant to our vital
needs in responding to the given situation. Because the mind
automatically preserves in memory every past perception, this
grid must suppress those memories which arc irrelevant to the
present situation. Thus the intellect acts as mediator between
the inexhaustible materials of “pure perception” and our simi-
larly inexhaustible personal memory. Science arises at the in-
tersection of environmental get^aphy and personal history.
This conception, although unnecessarily subjectivistic, sug-
gests its own expansion in a new understanding of the relation-
ship between time and space. Bergson, it seems, would emanci-
pate both “pure perception” and memory from the intellectual
grid; and Proust, Joyce, and other “stream of consciousness”
novelists inspired by Bergson show us the consequence of this
emancipation in an art which, whatever its surface iridesceneer
seems to lack purpose and plot.

Bergson’s hest-known work is his Creative Evolution, a
metaphysical study of the facts of organic evolution. This
study is prejudiced by Bergson’s earlier dismissal of theoretical
science as a perjured and deceptive accoimt of physical nature;
for Bergson caimot now do justice to the causal connection

THB CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SaENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 445

every creative hypothesis. Bergson identifies science with the
scientific formulas generated by the creative scientific mind,
formulas which any mediocre mind can memorize and mechani-
cally apply. This error may in its turn have been due to Berg-
son’s narrow conception of intuition, which he identified with
perception. We need not suppose that immediate perception
is our whole intuition of truth, and that we possess, in addition
to this perceptual faculty, only a power of verbal classification
and abstraction. Knowledge is advanced by large intuition
suggesting new hypothesis, this latter being the source of all
descriptive theory. Somehow we must rehabilitate our real
faculty of cognition, the true and creative “intuition” which is
the generator of all science and all true art.

In his ripest study. The Two Sources of Morality and Re-
lipon, Bergson is more sober. He finds two distinct factors
working in social evolution. One is the moral insight which has
inspired the great teachers and prophets; the other is the codes
and institutions which preserve and apply these prophetic in-
sights. His fantastic proposal to syntheize the instinct of
insects with the theoretical intellect now reappears in the wise
proposal that we should deliberately bring a critical moral in-
sight to bear upon our social institutions, continuously reform-
ing and ultimately transforming these. So the most brilliant
Jewish thinker of his century would once again reconcile the
law with the prophets, and fulfil the law in an ampler iusticc.

As the Nazis exploited Nietzsche, so the teachings of Berg-
son have been exploited by reactionary polidcal opportunists,
who read into his intuitionism the i'ostificstion of a violent
actmsme, and who use his pragmatism to justify the abuse of
institutional mechanisms and orthodox loyalties. Much as the
Greek sophists prostituted the critical method of Greek science,
by transforming it into a cheap and scurrilous diatribe against
“convention” and morality, so these modem sensationalists have
cheapened the modem criticism of science, by converting it
into an apology for amoralism and social violence.

THE OONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

445

his estimate of history, however, Croce is misled by his sub-
jective idcalisir.. which does not allow him to distinguish his-
tory as it occurred in the past from history as it is recovered
by the present mmd. He is misled also by his expressionism,
which holds every product of mental activity, including writ-
ten history, to be only an expression of the mind which pro-
duced it. ^ Croce tells us that the materials of history, i.e. the
data recovered by historical research, do not constitute history
until they are organized, synthesized, and informed by the liv-
ing mmd of the historian. It is only here and now, in its actual
entertainment by some mind, that the past has reality. What
therefore is the past.^ It is a dimension of the present mind,
which somehow projects its own distinctive form as “the past.”
Our ordinary conception of the past is in this case diametrically
opposite to the truth. We think of the past as determining the
present, whereas in truth the present determines the past. More
correctly, history is the full realization of our present selves.
The essential work of mind, i.e. of absolute being, is the con-
tinual reformation of its historical retrospect, and a perpetual
rewriting of history.

It is questionable whether a subjectivism so extreme as
Croce’s does not collapse into meaninglessness. We ordinarily
suppose that the documents and other data used by the his-
torian actually preserve certain characters pt^sessed by them
when they originated. W^e believe that we read the very words
inscribed by Caesar in his remote encampment, or dictated by
Queen Elizabeth. But no, Croce tells us; your perception of
the document is a present perception, is it not? And similarly
your interpretation of the document is a present hypothesis?
What is there here that is past? There is only your present
mind, which generates that “past.” But if we accept this con-
clusion as true and sufHcient, what meaning can we give to
the words “history,” “the past,” “yesterday,” “tomorrow.”
Time evidendy demands more objective treatment — Croce’s
violent embrace destroys its object.

THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SQENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 447

not manifest, in its particular way, some general or even uni-
versal principle? Would it not be paradoxical if the hypothesis
of evolution, which is the largest possible application of the
conviction that what occurs later is the causal resultant of what
existed earlier, should finally invalidate the concept of causa-
tion on which it rests?

The mechanistic concept of causation, which requires later
occurrence to be exhaustively explained as the determinate
effect of earlier occurrence, has been the governing principle
of modem science, and it has been the anchor since time im-
memorial of common sense and human sanity. We can really
conceive of no other son of explanation of fact. All that has
ever pretended to be another son of explanation cither col-
lapses upon careful examination into nonsense, or reveals it-
self to be only a verbal disguise of mechanistic explanation.
Thus philosophers long spoke of teleological explanation, by
which they meant an explanation of earlier occurrence as being
somehow determined by what it brought to pass later. We
cannot avoid this sort of explanation in our dealings with con-
scious and purposive behavior. The reason or cause of a pur-
posive act, we are wont to say, is the future effect which it in-
tends. And so, the tcleologist argued, we may suppose every
occurrence, and finally the whole cosmic process, to be de-
termined by that last supreme event which is its ultimate issue.
The future explains the past; and it does this only because it
determines the past, of which it is the reason or cause. But the
scientist, faithful to his principle of mechanistic causation, will
easily elude this argument for teleology in nature. The state-
ment that purposive behavior is determined by the end which
it seeks to realize, he will say, is elliptical. The purpose does
envisage an end, and action is guided by that prospect; yet the
purpose, the prospea, and the end envisaged are themselves
already determinate, and determined in fact by past conditions.
Purposive behavior is thus only a peculiarly complicated sort of
mechanistically determined activity.

THE CONCUEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

termined at some first moment, or that everything is determined
by its last issue. Hume’s conclusion still stands — ^we know of
no universal necessity in nature. Every moment is real and
effective, not only the first or last moment; and the later mo-
ment is no less effective than the earlier moment.

Now the hypothesis of evolution exhibits this truth, first
glimpsed by Hume, in a striking and tremendous way. We dis-
cover on this planet a progressive mutation of natural form
from inorganic, through organic, to human character. There
is material continuity in this progress, the inorganic matter
becoming organic, and organic matter becoming human. We
are required, therefore, to seek some sort of causal explanation
of the progress; and it is this explanation which eludes our
philosophers of evolution and drives them to speculative frenzy.
Nietzsche concludes that the evolutionary mutation is inex-
plicable, that it is externally unconditioned, and that we can
therefore mutate into anything we please. Bergson concludes
that evolutionary change is explicable, but only by a sort of
explanation that eludes scientific statement and that finds its
expression in the symbolisms of art. Croce concludes, astonish-
ingly, that the very distinction between past and present, upon
which all causal explanation rests, must be renounced, in which
case, of course, thg problem disappears; but this means only
that we are proh, |ted from asking any intelligent question
concerning natural -..hange.

One more “philosopher of evolution” will help us to grasp
the nature of this problem, presented by evolutionary science.
Sanruel Alexander (bom 1859) seems to have been early in-
fluenced by the dialectic of Hegel, but to have refused Hegel’s
idealistic epistemology. He is realistic in his acceptance of the
theories of natural science; and he makes his chief concern the
progress of natural evolution, especially in its movement from
physical or inorganic matter toward organic form, and finally
toward human intelligence.

In his chief work, which is entitled Space, Time, and Deity,

THE C»NCEPT OE EVOLUTIOV IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 45 1

overreaching or indwelling Form, working upon nature and
ptrsuadir.g it into that form “as far as necessity allovre”; but
:;.c forms of sensate, organic, minded, and deific nature

arise spontaneously— or rather, given certain complications
of the earlier form, the later form its thereby also present; and
here we are reminded of Spencer, who taught that the organic
and human forms of nature are nothing else than progressively
complex distributions of matter. These sudden and inexplicable
appearances of new forms or qualities Alexander calls “emer-
gences,” and he exhorts us to accept “with natural piety” this
potentiality of matter to re-create itself in new forms. “Natural
piety,” it would seem, requires a moratorium on inquiry and
curiosity. It is just the nature of nature, we are told, to evolve,
and to evolve specifically yet urprcdictcbly into the mineral,
organic, human, and social forms which we observe. Alexander
does suggest the effective and universal presence in nature of
a certain “nisus,” ue. a tendency or direction, leading from
forms of less value to forms of more value. This nisus, a sort
of ghost of the Platonic Good or the Hegelian Absolute,
escapes definition, and is presumably the object of a tran-
scendental apprehension. We have here a mystical conclusion,
similar to that of Bradley.

Alexander’s system is valuable for its clear presentation of
the problem it undertakes to solve- If we accept the analyses
and results of die several theoretical sciences as a final and
definitive description of nature, it fe shown, then we must
admit the effective presence in nature of relationships and
changes which simply elude theoretical explanation- Theoreti-
cal physics defines physical structure, theoretical chemistry
defines chemical structure, theoretical biology defines organic
structure, theoretical psychology defines human nature, and
theoretical sociology define, as they eventuate, the activi-
ties which Alexander attributes to “deity.” But no theoretical
analysis will grasp the evolutionary changes which transform
physical motion into chemical interaction, this into organic

THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 455

plicable. And third, the doctrine of emergence only revives
the discredited fallacies of rationalistic philosophy. It revives
in its hypostatization of primary and secondary caclities the
Cartesian dualism; but it proceeds to widen this dualism into
an absolute pluralism, by adding tertiary and quaternary quali-
ties. Yet we know of many causal relations between physical
actions and organic reactions, between physi'rlcgica! conditions
and mental processes, between individual thought and its social
environment. Why should we rrhrtrzri'.v insist that causal rela-
tions are intelligible when they occur viithin physical, organic,
mental, and social processes, but unintelligible when they occur
between these processes? Science cannot respect so arbitrary a
distinction.

And finally, when we examine more closely this doctrine of
emergentism, we discover that it is only a rather belated recog-
nition, obscured by rationalistic prepossessions, of the truth
announced by Hume. Hume showed that no causal connection
is intelligible in the sense that the effect can be deduced from
the cause. In all causal analysis, we finally reach types of causal
sequence which just are, and which we must accept as the way
of the world, as the basis of all scientific explanation of par-
ticular occurrences and as the source of our definitions of
things. But this finality of causal coimection holds of all causal
connections, not only of some. If the causal effect by which a
physical object stimulates in ourselves a mental perception is
inexplicable and “emergent,” so is the causal connccrion by
which a physical object influences the motion of another physi-
cal object. This even the seventeenth-century Occasionalists
knew. But Alexander cither does not understand, or will not
accept, the demonstration of Hume that all causal proces
whatsoever is “emergent” in its contingency. He is really a
belated Ctoiesian, lost in an evolving world. He teUs us that
there are four or five absolute substances, namely physical
motion, chemical matter, organic matter, mind, and society.
He admits that the earlier substance produces the latter. But
he rr.tir.rc.!ist:ca!!y identifies science with an intuition of abso-

THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 455

may insist here that we cannot legitimately accept the common
conclusion of these “'ch:!';?onhers of evolution,” who tell us
that cvoluticnary progress is scientifically inexplicable because
it eludes a purely theoretical analysis. Science is not necessarily
limited to theoretical analysis; nor, as we shall show, has it ever
been so limited. Science has always been more than its the-
oretical descriptions; and only because this is so could it arrive
at and seriously entertain the hj^othesis of natural evolution.
Science is eternally committed, however, to the principle that
all natural occurrence whatsoever is causally determinate, and
therefore scientifically intelligible and explicable. If we will
only hold fast to this principle of sufficient causation, which is
the root of human sanit)’-, we may come through the dark
forest of intellectual confusion and know again the light of
reason.

Notes for Further Reading

1. Frazer, J. G., Condor cet on the Progress of the Human Mind)

London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1933.

2. Morley of Blackburn, J., Biographical Studies (Turgot, Con-

dorcet). New York, TTie Macmillan Company, 1923.

3. Bun?-, J. B., The Idea of Progress. New York, The Macmillan

Company, 1921, 1932.

4. Dewey, J., The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy. New York,

Henry Holt and Company, 1910.

5. Osborn, H. F., The Origin and Evolution of Life. New York,

Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917.

6. Morgan, C. L., Emergent Evolution. New York, Henry Holt

and Company, 1923,

7. Boodin, J. E., Cosmic Evolution. New York, The Macmillan

Company, 1925.

8. Hobhouse, L. T., Development and Purpose. New York, The

Macmillan Company, 1913.

9. Baitsell, S. H., ed. The Evolution of Earth and Man. New

Haven, Yale University Press, 1929.

10. Conger, S. P., New Vievos of Evolution. New York, The Mac-
millan Company, 1929.

CONTEAffiORARY PHILOSOPHY

n

23 REALISM

W NOW REACH THE END OF OTJR SURVEY AND

approach the goal for which we undertook it,
namely, an understanding of contemporary life and thought.
Some of the thinkers noticed in the preceding chapter are
either still living or only recently deceased; and certain of the
nineteenth-century movements earlier described are still influ-
ential, although usually in somewhat modified form. Our study
of these thinkers and movements accordingly already intro-
duces us to contempOTary thought. Yet there is a sense in which
the twentieth century, especially the period following the First
World War, has drawn a line between ourselves and earlier
^culation. Contemporary philosophy makes new starts in
new directions. This independent and rather revolutionary
attitude affects the way in which earlier doctrines are under-
stood and developed today; and we best appreciate the new
outlook by observing those contemporary movements which arc
still in process of formulating their doctrines, and which brii^
this outlook to sharpest expression. We will consider the move-
ments known as the new realism, pragmatism, and logical poa-
tivism; but it should be remembered that every such classifica-
tion is oversimple and somewhat misleading. Today the whole
pattern of traditional thought is undergoing a sort of kaleido-

459

BEAXtSM

461

metaphysical pretensions; but the idealists transformed this
criticism into an invalidation of science, in the interests of a
supcrscientific metaphysics. The scientist who is intent upon
particular fact, it was urged, reaches only a tentative, con-
jectural, and incorrigibly partial or fragmentary knowledge;
but the reflective philosopher carries the stumbluig and blink-
ered effort of science to its true goal in an unrestricted knowl-
edge of absolute, universal, and unitary being. Only in such
absolute knowledge do we find the complete interrelationship
of fact which science haltingly depicts in its empirical hypoth-
eses. Perhaps we may agree that science does point beyond
its present formulations of fact to a more inclusive knowledge.
But the scientist would like to advance to this better knowl-
edge himself, with due regard for scientific method and rigor.
He is not satisfied to be told that his method is by defini-
tion incompetent, and that another “transcendental” knowl-
edge, which he would call empty and verbal, must supersede
his empirical study of fact. So science was increasingly and
quite properly hostile to this philosophical transcendentalism.

Further, the political implications of this absolutistic philos-
ophy aroused fear and distrust, especially when it became the
creed of conservative opposition to a liberalism which seemed
to have lost its intellectual bearings. Starring from the ap-
parently innocuous and liberal-sounding doctrine of individual
self-realization, the absolutist could pMtray this self-realization
as a movement by which the individual person ultimately iden-
tifies himself with Absolute Reality, the One or All, and
proceed to discover the chief actualization of this Absolute in
the state. This conclusion may appear farfetched; yet it is his-
torical fact that all absolutistic political theory has grounded
itself upon some form of absolutistic metaphysics.

Finally, the doctrine of metaphysical absolutism, even where
it was ostensibly advanced as the theological bastion of religion,
repelled many a religious mind and probably contravened the
creeds of most religious confessions. Christianity cspedaliy

REAUSM 463

ism, and other movements which hold that the mind in somo
way constructs and in some degree generates its cognized
objects. The doctrine is indeed realistic in its insistence upon
the identity of cognized things, relationships

— ^with reality itself. Yet the name “realism” is not very helpful
to our appreciation of its distinctive teaching. Medieval scho-
lasticism was realistic when it taught that the reason intuits the
true essences or specific forms of things. Nominalism was real-
istic in respect to sensed fact, if it insisted that our immediate
perceptions of particular character, but not our abstract con-
ceptions, infallibly apprehend reality. And absolute idealism
in Hegel or Bosanquet was realistic when it accorded to the
concepts generated by transcendental reflection an absolute
validity and an identity of some hind with universal being. The
idealistic postulate of absolute idealism, aflirming the identity
of Reality with Mind, was used to establish the realistic postu-
late that the objects construaed by mind may have the status
of absolute reality. In what, then, did this new realism distin-
guish itself from older forms of realism? W herein was it more
realistic than these other doctrines? The new realism distin-
guished itself from earlier realism in two ways. First, it was
impartial with respect to the realistic claims of perception and
conception, or, the senses and the inteUect. Both, it held, may
directly and truly apprehend real bemg of some sort. Secondly,
it was unusually clear and outspoken concerning the nature
of such cognition. The perceived or conceived object, it said,
enters the mind without alteration of any kind, without shadow
of change. Cognition differs from many processes known to
us, in that the cognized objea is unaffected by its mental con-
text, or by the process of becoming cognized. The object as it
is apprehended is exactly what it was before it was appre-
hended, and what it will be after it is out of mind again.

A primary intention of this doctrine was to protect scientific
knowledge from the various kinds of criticism it had under-
gone smoe Berkeley and Hume. If both perceptien and con-

REALISM

465

proponent of contemporary realism, is Bertrand Russell (bom
1872). Russell in his successive writings has attempted such
diverse approaches to the problem of knowledge, and reached
so various and tentative conclusions, that a resume of his teach-
ing is scarcely possible. Noticeable is his distinction, both in his
earliest and in his latest writings, of two domains of “real”
knowledge, i.e. of absolute and necessary judgments. One of
these is the perceptual domain of sensed quality. We indubi-
tably perceive colors, shades of the “same” color, and relation-
ship among colors. Orange is necessarily placed between red
and yellow. Here is the domain of indubitable, immediately
apprehended fact which provides the material — ^not only in its
qualities but also in its rc! itionsfirr s — 5 .:r all conceptual knowl-
edge. The other domain is that of logical and conceptual
objects, e.g. mathematical entities. Here also we have imme-
diate and indubitable insight. The problem is to see how these
two domains of absolute knowledge, which appear in many
ways incommensurable, conspire to give us the hypotheticii
or probable knowledge which is empirical science. Russell
attacks this problem again and again, but never claims that he
has solved it.

Russell’s lasting fame, which will increase as the centuries
pass, depends less on these inconclusive epistemological studies
than on his reform of l(^c, to which we referred in our study
of Kant. For more than two thousand years, logic had re-
mained much what Aristotle left it — a study of sentences of the
form A is B (all A is B, some A is B, no A is B, some A is not
B) and of syllogisms composed of pairs of such sentences and
their implications (no AisB, some C is A, so some C is not B).
Philosophically minded logicians had produced large tomes
which elaborated this primitive logic as a basic definition of the
“laws of thought,” and discussed with some acumen and vast
labor its relationship to factual matei^ and , ultimate being.
But modem science had long since forgotten .this Aristotelian
logic, and developed its own ways of thought and intellectual

REAUSM

467

the logic of the future. It transformed the discipline of logic,
vastly extended it, and made possible a new understanding of
the nature of logic and of its relation to empirical knowledge
and to fact.

This revolution was not the work of a day, nor yet of two
men. Russell leaned heavily on the contributions of earlier
mathematicians and logicians, such as Leibniz, Frege, Peano,
and Boole; but he consolidated and developed these earlier
studies, and, above all, he made the intellectual world aware of
them and their significance. The Matbematice

formally announced the close of one long era of intellectual
development, and the inauguration of a new philosophical era,
in which the inquiring human intellect casts loose from certain
fi xed moorings to which it had earlier been anchored. Hence-
forth the thought of man must sail the open sea and find,
instead of the old landmarks, stars by which to navigate its
course.

This prospect which is opened up by the Prmcipia Matbe-
matica we shall discuss later. Here we take note only of the
contribution of this work to logic. The authors show conclu-
sively enough that the propositions of pure mathematics can be
restated without loss of cogency in strictly Ic^cal terms.
Mathematical theory becomes a compact but tremendous sym-
bolic system, the purely logical character of which can be
made explicit by a meticulous and rather tedious process of
analysis and symbol definition. The forms and operations of
thought, it follows, are not to be identified with the rudi-
mentary code sanctified by traditional logic. They are at least
as many, as various, as flexible, and as capable of development
as are the operations and s\*mbolizations of a creative mathe-
matical science.

Russell undertook this inqui^ into logical form in the inter-
ests of realistic philosophy. .Ir was, he assured the writer, ex-
pressly to undercut and to discredit the assumptions of Kant
concerning mathematics, that he proceeded to this laborious

REALISM

469

that they are firmly adhered to. We can define meanings and
symbols as we please, and uphold our definitions by fiat — ^for
example, in a dictionary the authority of which we enforce.
On the other hand, there are Sv-nthetic or descriptive proposi-
tions which make statements about things and natural proc-
esses; and these nrcposirinns. based upon cur limited perception
and our partial understanding of nature, are subject to change.
These prcrr;?;t:cns are less than absolute, being only probable
in their truth. As Hume had shown, we have no absolute or
certain knowledge of matters of fact. The absolute certainty
of a proposition is sufficient evidence of its purely logical and
nondescriptive character.

Mathematical science, ever since the time of Pythagoras and
Plato, had seemed to constitute a knowledge at once absolute
and certain in its truth, and universally descriptive in its ap-
plicability to nature; and the existence of this mathematical
science had seemed to demtKistrate the pciscsi:>.r. by man of a
rational faculty able to reach such absolute and universal
knowledge of fact. The reduction of mathematical propositions
10 symbolic definitions ended this long error, by sharply demar-
cating the sphere of free or arbitrary logical construction from
that of scientific hypothe^; and it thus ended, presumably for
perpetuity, the era of rationalistic metaphysics. However, this
clear demarcation of the fields of logic and science does not
solve, but only makes more acute and definable, the problem of
the relation between freely constructed symbolic s\-stcn:s, such
as mathematical theory, and the descriptive theories of em-
pirical science, within which mathematical theory is somehow
incorporated. Does physical science, for example, with its in-
timate dependence upon mathematical theory, endow this incor-
porated logic with descriptive meaning and truth, and show the
c:.ir_'::5r.surnb:l:r.' of pure logic with material fact? Or does
our awareness of thK purely logical structure in physical
science warn us that physical theory is a human construction,
which may not be accepted as the sheer description of an

REALISM

471

himself. The human individual lives as a member of society, in
the polidcal government of which he necessarily participates;
and his responsibility is not limited to an abstention from injury
to othere. His political power, just insofar as it is exercised,
makes him the guardian of others. Inevitably, he is his brother’s
keeper. His right use of political power makes him the creator
of other lives, his abuse of it makes him the destroyer of other
lives. Moral and political responsibility therefore constituces a
positive responsibility for others’ good; and our insight into
what is good for others presupposes our interest in others and
our love of them. An atomistic individualism, limiting individ-
ual responsibility to a negative withholding of injury from
others, will not indefinitely support democratic government.
This requires the positive assamprion by each individual of the
responsibilities of a governor of the social and moral com-
munity, within which each life is determined and by which it
is shaped.

But we should be satisfied, perhaps, to leave to the future an
estimate of this most important thinker of his gcncrarion, whose
tremendous effect upon thought will be patent as long as intel-
lectual curiosity impels the human mind. We will return to
further consideration of Russell’s influence in our treatment of
contemporary positivism.

Alfred North Whitehead (bora 1861), Russell’s collaborator
in the Principia MatheTnatica, proceeded from this same Ic^cal
study to farreaching metaphysical speculations. It is interesting
to observe how these two men were so differently influenced
by that study, and to speculate on the reasons. Russell, trained
in philosophy and favorable to the empirical British tradition,
was con&med in his suspicion that logic is an empty or
“trivial” knowledge, having to do chiefly with symbols and
their ntanipulation. Whitehead, an able and creative mathe-
matician, was confirmed in his belief that conceptual construc-
tion is the heart or dynamo of thought itself, and was encour-
aged to trust to his logical talent in an attack upon the largest

REALISM

473

allows us, therefore, to infer the relationships among nonex-
pcrienced events; and it is these we seek to define in theoretical
knowledge. Such knowledge is abstract and indirect; but be-
cause our intellectual cognition is itself an occasion, directly
ingredient with our immediate perceptions and, through these,
indirectly ingredient with external events, natural knowledge
is incorporate with its object, the external world; and this is
how the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter is overcome.
We are hereby assured that experience and knowledge, al-
though not to be identified with nature, are homogeneous with
nature. Experience is the stuff of which nature is made; and
nature is also the stuff of which experience is made.

Whitehead’s ir.etaphysic is in many ways superior to its
model, the Leibnizian monadism. It is extraordinarily versatile,
flexible, competent in its interpretation of science. It is never
without a philosophical answer; nor will the answer strain
credulity although Whitehead’s terminology may tax the
memory. Leibniz needed both a deus ex vmcbma to set the stage
of nature, in God the Creator of the monads, and a deus in
machina, in God the Supreme Monad. Whitehead, like Samuel
Alexander, requires only a deity who works as an active and
universal nrincinie of realization, moderating and informing the
careers of those who freely cooperate. For Whitehead, individ-
ual being is authentically free and indeterminate, and not
predestined. Almost certainly, there never was so ingenious a
metaphysical system as this of Whitehead; and not impossibly
it may continue indefinitely to be just that — the laa meta-
ph3^cal system to end metaphysical systems.

Why has this brilliant speculative construction, so ingemoiB
and plausible, which at so little cost saves so much — all the
freedoms, all aesthetic qualities and moral values, the two
criteria of science, and religion along with science — ^why has
this genial philosophy elicited so little intellectual response, and
not become the rallying point and credo of all honest and
reverent intellectuals? Whitehead’s vocabulary is somewhat

REALISM

475

certainly not the old rationalisn:. which identified its rational
intuition of eternal essence with a theoretical knowledge of the
cosmic process of nature. In Whitehead’s system, the essences
provide only the atomic elements, out of which existent actual-
ities are composed; and because the elements are infinite in
number, they can compose into an infinite variety of existent
worlds, so that the character of existent fact is contingent and
must be discovered by observation. Whitehead’s conception is
therefore consistent with empirical method; but does it illu-
minate and justify, or does it on the contrary make inexplicable
and dubious, an empirical theoretical science? In what sense is
our science d«criptive of this world, if its theory would
equally well apply to innumerable other worlds, variously
compounded of the same essences? And how can we conceive
of the relation between these two realms — the intuited realm
of subsistent essence, and the experienced and lived world of
particular existence? Does this sort of realism ignore the real
problem, which is the relation of general knowledge to par-
ticular existential fact? Does it know the creed and share the
burden of a genuine empiricism, which intends to affirm the
ultimacy and the intelligibility of individual being? Or docs it,
like Plato, leave inexplicable the relation between the actual and
the ideal, and lead us toward skepticism?

Russell, although he too affirms the cognitive ultimacy of
ultra-individual essences, such as are reached by an introspec-
tive epistemological analysis, is no longer inclined to give them
—etaphvsical status, but leaves their relationship to existential
reality problematic. It is quesrionablc whether contemporary
realism, in trying to save theoretical science from its critics by
i nsistin g upon the identity with “reality” of the objects de-
scribed by theoretical analysis, leaves science more securely
established or more exposed to rationalistic distortion or
skeptical dianissal. Presupposed in all philcsophical realism of
this kind is the csscmpticn. conscious or implicit, that some sort
of analysis other than scientific analysis is needed to establish

nSALISM

477

hension of real objects. Cognititm, in this view, has a peculiar
status, and may not be treated as a merely psychological process,
integrally part of the context of natural processes which are the
object of cognition. The objects of cognition. Meinong taught,
may or may not exist — they must include, indeed, objects
which cann t t sxist, as well as objects which do exist

and objects -..i^ ■ : exist. Thought, in a word, is something
distinct from, and more extensive than, the nature which is
thought about. It is essential to thought that it should be able
to contemplate and define certain “objective realities,” whether
or not these “realities” exist. Meinong is led to affirm the being
of a realm of subsistents, ue. of real and intelligiMy interrelated
objects which transcend the realm of existent things. This
“objective” realm of essences he finds to be the basis or sub-
stance of all scientific and ethical theory.

Edmund Husserl (bom 1859) has defended, elaborated, and
applied a related conception in the studies known as Fhenome^
nology. This name would appear to derive from Hegel’s realistic
study The Phenomenology of Mind, which claimed that an in-
tellectual cognition of perceptual phenomena, or appearances,
discerns those universal yet “concrete” forms which are the
substance of ultimate reality. {The Real appears/) Husserl,
however, distinguishes phenomenological cognition as a peculiar
sort of act, neither merely perceprucl nor yet metaphysical in
Hegel’s sense. For Hegel, cognition is rational and absolute be-
cause it comprehends a particular phenomenon as an integral
part of the universal and absolute whole, which alone is real
being. For Husserl, the absolute rational cognition grasps only
its present object — a view which does not involve metaphysical
assumptions of a monistic sort. Phenomenology thus belongs to
the new realism in its postulation of a vast plurr.!:ty of real
objects, known directly and with absolute certaintx- by the
mind. It differs from other forms of new realism in stressing
that these objects arc real and objective only for a conscious
subject. As its origins suggest, it is a realism which leans toward

REALISM

479

Most -widely kno-wn of this realistic group, perhaps, is George
Santayana (bom 1863), whose mellifluous style and literary
skill give to his writings an appeal apparently irresistible to the
reader untrained in philc-scphy. Santayana’s earliest realism was
of a Platonic sort. In >J'j L;; ;? of Reason he invited the reader to
the contemplative life, in the enjoyment of an interminable
play with eternal essences mathematical, physical, and aesthetic.
From this Platonic heaven Santayana seems to have fallen -with-
out a parachute upon an earth inconsiderately hard and matcriaL
We live, he -writes with infinitely cadenced complaint, tom
between heaven and earth, and strung between the “life of
reason” and a sordid “animal faith.” This is Santayana’s state-
ment of the problem of the relation between the realistic
essences which are open to rational cognition, and the empirical
knowledge of existent fact which is obtained by -way of ob^rva-
tion and probable hypothesis. The problem itself he never
dirccdy attacks; but he unceasingly bewails it, in a poetic prose
which charms, perhaps because it lulls, the philosophical
neophyte.

A sturdier representative of American realism is Jobn Elof
Boodm (bora i860). Boodin’s empirical or “functional” real-
ism consistently avoids iKaj duali^ of essence and existence
which remains the insolubje jresidue of more strictly realistic
theories of knowledge. B<iodin’s primary business with epis-
temology, it might not unfairly 5^ gaid^ j-© get rid of it -with
its apparent hasolublc^ in ^rdcr to advance from the latest find-
ings of the sped;?! sdencfe to more comprehensive and unified
speculation abou^ the w^rld. His “functional realism” sets the
mind in material -^terattion with its bodily setting and -with
the external cnvironm^lt, the result being that natural knowl-
ed^ remains functionally corporate with its object nature, yet
specifically distinct from it. This conception of functional rela-
tionship is further developed in a mct'.physics of organization.
The many individual and o^-erlapping energy-systems W'hich
comprise reality reveal an unstable yet enduring hierarchical

REAUSM

481

structures defined by theoretical science to be intuited by the
pure reason, the sensory perception of particular fact serving
only to illustrate, not to discover, these real structures. Modem
science, nominalistically influenced, has emphasized the role of
perceived particular fact, which it allows to be the criterion of
theoretical truth and the whole source of theoretical knowl-
edge. The Cartesian philosophy, in its defense of theoretical
science, renounced the dualism of matter and form which had
made Greek realism intelligible; but it affirmed the realistic
creed more emphatically than ever, by identifying the concrete
being of nature with the structure defined by geometrical
theory. This Cartesian realism failed, we saw, to explain the
facts of time, motion, and particularity', which were earlier
taken care of by the Greek concept of matter; and the em-
pirical attack seemed in the eighteenth century to have dis-
credited all realism. Then came the bold attempt of the post-
Kantians to save realism by attributing realistic truth not to
observant empirical theory, but to a “reflective” philosophical
theory. These men were quite serious in their denial of cogency
to empirical science, and in their excogitation of a new “philos-
ophical science.” It soon became evident to other serious men,
however, that this return to realistic faith at the price of aban-
doning empirical science saved only the form and not the sub-
stance of that faith. Either the results of theoretical science had
to be surreptitiously reestablished by the theoretical philos-
opher, or Ws “philosophical science” lacked ail cogency and
even meanmg. And so we are brought to contemporary r^ism,
which is a fresh effort to establish the cogency of theoretical
science, by affirming again and in some new way the identity
with ultimate reality of the objects defined by science.

How far does this latest effort succeed? Contemporary real-
ism usually admits that the special theories of science are
reached by hytpothescs based upon a study of particular faa.
The realist is empirical in his admission that the descriptive
theories of science are only probable hypotheses. We have no

SEAtISM

483

intellectual faith. Realism affirms the power of thought, and
calls upon us to accept as truly descriptive of nature the con-
clusions of an intellectual study of nature. The reality which
science aims to describe, however, is existent nature; and the
reality which realism finally establishes is that of subsistent
being, a realm of essence the relation of which to existence re-
mains mysterious and ircxplrciblc. We will suggest later that
all realism, old or new, fails to grasp the chief motive of em-
pirical thought, and does less than justice to the empirical
science of today. The realism of science is something else than
this philosophic.:! realism.

Modern science rejected Greek and scholastic realism, we may
say, because it was necessar}' to reject the finality of all merely
general and theoretical kr.ovdcdgc. in order to allow the con-
tinuous progress of theoretical science in the light of new'
evidence. The concept of scientific progress, we shall find, re-
quires an advance to a new and larger conception of scientific
truth. But this advance cannot renounce that faith in the
descriptive power of science which realism seeks to uphold.
The philosophy of the future must be an enlarged realism. We
may not, in order to do justice to particular fact and crrpirica!
science, renounce our faith in the descriptive truth of knowl-
edge; yet this is what the philosophies of prcgtr.at;s~ and
positivism, to which we now turn, w'ould seem to require.

Notes for Further Reading

1. Moore, G. E., Philosophical Studies. New York, Harcourt,

Brace and CcT:pc-:r. 1922.

2. Ethics. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 191Z.

3. Russell, B., P!::lc,iopb:j.z! Essays. London, Longmans, Green

and Cempeny, 19 10.

4. The Problems of Philosophy. New York, Henry Holt

and Companv. rpiz.

5. MystL'U’u and Logic. Boston, Longmans, Green and

Company. 1918.

<5. An Analysis of .Mind. New Y'ork, The Macmillan Com-

24 PRAGMATISM

CONTEMPORARY REALISM IS THE CHARACTER-

isdc oudook in British philosophical circles, so prag-
matism has had its center and widest fcilowing in the United
States of America, There have been pragmatic thinkers in
Britain and Europe; but only in this country has pragmarism
been a movement or school effectively propagating a common
outlook and faith. And pragmatism remains, in spite of its occa-
sional appearance elsewhere, a philosophical movement largely
identified with America,

It was only in the twentieth century that American thought
attempted to find for itself a distinctive vocabulary and for-
mulation. Colonial America had preserved a motley of theolog-
ical. philosophical and moral creeds brought from Europe,
England and Scotland. It w'as to follow these
creeds without hindrance that many American colonists had
crossed the Atlantic and settled in the New World. Calvinistic
and Lutheran theology, Puritan zeal, the political philosophy
of John Locke, and the “common-sense realism” cultivated in
the Scottish universities had satisfied a colonial society which
was not so much indifferent to philosophies! ideas (indeed, it
W'as somewhat u.nu.sus;ly committed to them) as absorbed by
the practical busmess of creating out of great material resource

PRAGMATISM

487

formalized. To what degree American scholarship will retain
these German borrowings remains to be seen. Along with Ger-
man pedantry came a good deal of German philosophy, usually
that of the post-Kantian idealists; and for a time it seemed as if
German transcendentalism might take root on American soil.
Its ablest exponent was Josiah Royce, a son of California
pioneers, and long the colleague of William James at Harvard
University. Royce was a very independent disciple of his Ger-
man teachers. He never confused the Absolute with human
experience; and he remained very empirical in his emphasis on
individual being, and in his refusal to transcend temporal and
spatial relations. Where the German absolutists tended to see
the supreme actualization of the Absolute Mind in the political
state, Royce found it m the religious community of mankind.
In such ways, he eliminated those aspects of German absolutism
which made it least acceptable to the American public; but he
was nevertheless to witness the realistic and pragmatic reaction
which virtually swept absolute idealism from the lecture halls
of America.

The leader of this reaction was William James (1842-1910).
James came to philosophy late, by way of art, medicine, and
psychology. To this training he owed his most fruitful concep-
tions; but it may have prevented him from 2pprcc;r.t:ng the his-
torical development of philosophy, s.-£ its t.; certain

root problems apart frc~ v- hich it loses its importance and
even its identity. James’ study of psychology, a new and ad-
venturous discipline still in search of a “method,” quickened
his perception of the empirical and experimental character of
science, and made him impatient with every sort of formalism;
and these tendencies were strengthened by what he found in
his study of psychical processes. In his Principles of Psychol-
ogy, a work no longer authoritative but still the most stimulat-
ing of psychological texts, James moved from the introspective
associational psychology which had been current since Hume
to a functional and biological analysis of behavior. He refused

PRAGMATISM

489

changing process which integrates the organism into its en-
vironment. In man, this process happens to be conscious and
inteHigent; but consciousness is not something additive to the
process. “Consciousness as such” does not exist. Concepts are
only fixities or uniformities of interaction, appearing in this
vital process of adjustment. They are only relative constants,
subject to change. It is because we rigidly and artificially
separate this vital process into two incommensurable parts, a
substantial world and a substantial mind, that there arise the
insoluble pseudo-problems of which rtct'inhy'f'c:;! theories arc
the pretended solution. If our knowledge of the world is our
functional adjustment to the world, kr.ov. Iedge is conditioned
both by what lies outside of us and by what transpires within
us. If this is so, we cannot suppose that knowledge defines a
reality wholly independent of ourselves, a thing-in-itself which
needs only to be realistically inspected and described. Nor,
on the other hand, should we conclude that knowledge is there-
fore wholly nondescriptive and subjective. The cognitive
process is real enough, wherever it proceeds and whatever it
be; and it involves both external nature and human activity in
its content and structure.

James rightly believed that this functional ccrrcccrior.. which
sees in cognition an adjustment or relation between man and his
environment, requires a new conception of what constitutes
truth. Earlier philosophy had never wholly renounced the
familiar assumption that knowledge is true insofar as it de-
scribes a structure which is intrinsic to nature itself, and inde-
pendent of the mind. The philosopher might realistically
affirm the identity of the -object with ultimate reality;

or he might claim only that a certain correspondence exists be-
tween what is cognized and what is real, much as a photogreph
represents the thing photographed; or, failing to demonstrate
even such correspondence, he might lapse into skepticism. But
James struck a new and bold course. If cegnition is man’s
adjustment to his environment, he said, then true knowledge is

PRAGMATISM

491

cion of the earlier empiricism, American pragmatism is
primarily a critical doctrine, antagonistic to rationalistic meta-
physics. Its power and its purpose are never apparent to the
thinker who fails to appreciate this fact, and who demands
from pragmatism a systematic doctrine. The pragmatism of
James was his criticism of European rationalism.

The pragmatism of Dewey and his followers extends this
criticism to certain current forms of realism, which are showm,
the writer believes correctly, to involve rationalistic implica-
tions. And if American perperaates the empirical

opposition to absolutistic philosophy, it is also the expression
of a liberal faith which continually opposes absolutism in prac-
tical life. Institutions, it teaches, are made by man for man; and
they are therefore subject to perpetual criticism and contin-
uous modification by those who use them.

In America pragmatism gives new voice and fresh applica-
tion to the moral and intellectual faith which has
modem science and modern society. It is the philosophy of the
liberal and progressive thmker; and it claims to have found a
more just and effective statement of the moral and philo-
sophical truth which inspires modem man. But although prag-
matism preserves a tradition carried from its parental source
some centuries ago, and only now given new and forceful
expression, the pragmatist is not oblivious of what has tran-
spired smee then; and he is especially aware of the philosophical
significance of evolutionary science. It might almost be said
that pragmatism is a form of empirical philosophy which
identifies science wdth evolutionary biology, whereas earlier
empiricism had identified science with physical and chemical
theory. This and other shifts of approach appropriate to con-
temporary thought make pragmatism a doctrine difficult to
define; and this difficulty is increased by the critical or negative
character of the doctrine, which leaves its positive affirmations
fluid and elusive.

James’ initial statement of the doctrine, that trath is the cash-

PRAGMATISM

493

dition of the city’s becoming free of smoke; and nere, belief
may help to create its own evidence. Bat does our belief that
the moon causes the tides help to make this belief come true?
Or is this belief true simply because it states a fact which is
wholly independent of whether the fact helps us or hurts us,
and of whether it is believed or not? Can we, where King
Canute could not, retard the tide by refusing to acknowledge
its advance? James’ pragmatism seemed to collide with every
sort of realism — not only with philosophical realism, but widi
the realism of science and common sense.

The defense and development of pragmatism was under-
taken by John Dewey (bom 1859), w’ho has remained its most
fluent and influential advocate. Dewey brought to this crusade
arguments and conceptions derived from nineteenth-century
European philosophy, especially from the post-Kantians. Like
James, he was influenced in his approach to philosophy by his
study of psychological and biological facts. He placed knowl-
edge in its concrete matrix, the progress of individual and social
life; and he viewed it as an instrument of ad'-ostmenr, serving
the organism and society by bringing each into adjustment
with the other, and also into adjustment with nature at large.
But Dewey was also early and profoundly influenced by ^
thought of Hegel, which determined his epistemolc^ and hs
philosophical method; and if we would understand conten^io-
rary pragmatism, which is that of Dewey, we must appreciate
its relation to the Hegelian metaphysic. in spite of the fact that
few pragmatists seem to be aware of this influence and that
Dewey himself has forgotten it.

How could the Hegelian system, which we saw to be the
most absolute of rationalisms, be converted into a doctrine
which is extremely empirical, and critical of every sort of
rationalism? Hegel, we remember, had created what he called a
“new logic,” namely “dialectical logic.” Ordinary logic, he
said, is purely abstract, trivial, and nondescriptive — ^its defini-
tions are merely nominal or verbal; but there is a “concrete

PRAGMATISM

495

The actuality he sees is the process of knowledge itself, in-
tegrating mind and nature. This process does, of course, absorb
and digest the new facts which continuously come into the
mind; but this involves for Dewey no realistic conception of an
actuality external to the mind, and independent of it. The new
facts which enter the mind are not to be conceived as existmg
in their own right, because they derive their character as
“facts” wholly from their relationship to old and new hypoth-
eris. Dewey’s pragmatism, in short, is a new and empirical
version of the post-Kantian idealism. It seems to attribute
reality or actuality only to the process and content of mind-
It avoids any realistic discussion of the relation of knowledge
to an external world, a reality which is not knowledge but the
object-which-knowledge-describes. It allows us to discuss only
old-facts-as-known, hypothesis or knowledge, and new-facts-
as-knowoi. It confines us within human experience.

It should be perceived that the idea of a “concrete logic”
necessarily involves an idealistic metaphysics. Logic is truly the
study of explicit knowledge, wherein logic di^guishcs the
most general form from the varying content. If logical forms
are “concrete,” in the sense that they still contain all their
particular factual content, then we cannot hope to distinguish
what is general knowledge of nature from what is particular
fact, nor from whatever it is that appears to the mind as par-
ticular occurrence. We cannot distinguish mind from nature.
But pragmatism seldom acknowledges its idealistic presupposi-
tions. It obscures these by its definitioa of knowledge and
intelligence, which it identifies with the organic process of ad-
justment to environment. This definition itself implies, of
course, a realistic and nonidcalistic conception of nature, since
it separates the organism from its environment. But the bodily
organism, it is then said, is itself just the process of intelligent
readjustment. The body is its life, and the life is its intelligence.
This implicit idealism is further obscured by the pragmstist’s
dominating concern with the social environment. The most

PRAGMATISM

497

of man, is in radical evolurion, and submits to no fixities of
statement. Even if we were to conceive of a fixed physical en-
vironment conditioning man, knowledge would still be fluid
r.7d Trr--:??:-,". never definitive; for each intelligent readjust-
: t>.; c..-ganism to that freed environment would con-
stitute a change of organic character, this w'ould establish a
changed relationship of organism to environment, and this
would generate new facts reruiring new the-.' is. In Hegel,

we saw, the conception of natural evolution was degraded into
that of a fixed dialectical system. By Dewey, evolution is given
its rightful character; but Dewey still, like Hegel, presents the
evolution idealistically, as that of intelligence or concrete mind.
The needed readjustment of a thing to its environment is de-
scribed as constituting a “problem”; the thing’s reactions to the
problematic simation are a trial and effort applying implicit
or explicit hypotheses, which apprehend the character of the
situation in its relation to the thing; and the true hypothesis is
that which effects the readjustment, producing satisfaction.
The satisfaction is only temporary, because the new' readjust-
ment will sooner or later generate new problems.

Pragmatism originated, we saw, in the pragmaric definition
of truth. The truth of a proposition was said to be its beneficent
consequence, or the character of the prcpcsitinn which condi-
tions this beneficent consequence. The truth of a belief is the
good it does. To say this is to subordinate all factual judgment
to moral judgment. This is the great virtue and appeal of prag-
matism, that it converts all factual and scientific truth into
moral truth. Kant had been compelled to distinguish scientific
knowledge, as only phenomenal, from the true insight which
is conscience. The post-Kantians had attempted to convert this
moral intuition into a systematic philosophy, transcending a
merely descriptive science. Dewey, rejecting the rationalistic
presuppositions of Kantian thought, flatly identifies moral
intuition with scientific intelligence. If science speaks truth,
then its affirmations are those which effect beneficent conse-

PRAGMATISM

499

is defined as being progressive and creative. More specificaHr,
Dewey has convinced the jurist that law is but the instrument,
continuously renovated, by which society readjusts itself to
changing economic and intellectual conditions, so that law
exists to serve life and not to control it; and jurists have turned
to an empirical and nragmatic He has told the

statesman and citizen that governmental institutions may not
be more fixated than the social actualities w'hich generate and
use government; and pragmatism becomes the faith of the
political radical. In pedagogy, the educator is w^amed against
formal disciplines, and inspired to a “progressive education”
which will develop the native powers of the pupil, by exercis-
ing them in ways preparing him for the actualities of con-
temporary life. By a pragmatic criticism of art, the artist is
weaned from classicism and the pursuit of art for art’s sake,
and led to make his craftsmanship the instrument of social re-
form and the dignifier of human labor and the common life.
In matters religious, the believer is direaed toward a liberal
modernism which makes little of formal creed and institutional
tradition, deprecates sectarian differences, and translates theo-
logical metaphysics into ethical doctrine and sociological in-
struction. “Science” and “society" become terms quick by
one another into new significance; and “Science and Society”
becomes the slogan of a reformatory program which will re-
create every human activity, not least by bringing the too
specialized departments and institutions of human life into
reciprocal stimulation and readjustment, in the acknowledg-
ment of a common social responsibility.

All of this is high achievement; and surely no empiricist, nor
any liberal, moral, and progressive thinker, would desire to
diminish or undo the stiraulatmg influence wdiich prag 'utisrr:
has exerted and will continue to e.xert upon American society.
Pragmatism is a complex, rich, and ir.ar.y-sf'i;d doctrine. It
revives and empowers the largest and most liberal tradition of
modernity, going back to the earlier sources of this tradidon.

PRAGMATISM

501

that knowledge should be instrumental, and that we should
perceive and establish its instrumentality, we most have descrip-
tive knowledge of a real world, made up of existent persons
and things.

If pragmatism has meaning only for one who is at heart a
realist, what does pragmatism add to the realistic theory of
knowledge? Our actual knowledge at any moment comprises
a comprehensive summary of observed past occurrence. Prag-
matism reminds us that this knowledge is not final nor absolute,
but may be modified by future experience. We use our present
knowledge when we hazard predictions, and the observation
of the predicted occurrence confirms the knowledge on which
the prediction was based. The pragmatist comes to regard this
future confirmation of present knowledge as the sole verifica-
tion of knowledge. The truth of the hypothesis, he says, lies
wholly in its relation to the future occurrence which verifies
it, i.e., makes it come true. But, in sober fact, the truth of any
actual hypothesis lies wholly in its relation to past and present
fact, and to no degree in its relation to future fact. It is past
occurrence, so far as known, which establishes an hypothesis;
and the future occurrence which may confirm the hypothesis
cannot do this until it too has occurred, and is past. Further,
the prediction which later confirms an hypothesis need not be
and usually is not some practical application of the hypothesis.
It may be a purely scientific prediction, concerned only to test
scientific truth. Knowledge is not made true by being used.
Its descriptive truth lies in its comprehension of observed par-
ticular fact; and its instrumental value derives from its descrip-
tive truth.

In its conception of truth, pragmatism still does unconscious
service to the idol of absolute knowledge, a service w’hich
finally leads to skepticism. If the truth of a theory lay in its
future consequence, knowledge would never be possessed, it
would always be only anticipated. The pragmatist is led to
identify knowledge with verified particular prediction because

PRAGMATISM

503

and because it has quickened moral ideals nurtured by centuries
of moral and religious education. Already, however, pragma-
tism begins to reveal its inherent inadequacies. It begins to infect
the scientist with skepticism, by destroying his faith in the
descriptive power of theory, and by persuading him that his
theories are merely mental constructs implemental to predic-
tion. And it begins to foster an unhealthy jurisprudence, willing
to overlook the absolute and eternal requirements of justice,
and to question the constitutional securements of justice, in too
plastic an accommodation of legal principles to local and
transient pressures. In Europe, pragmatism has been the re-
source of violent and reactionary groups, who defend their
unscrupulous and tyrannical programs of action on the ground
that the success of these programs, that is to say their forceful
actualization, will pragmatically justify them. Pragmatism was
the activisme of the reactionaries who betrayed France, and
of the chauvinists who marched on Rome. “Just think this new
Rome,” cried Mussolini, “believe in it, and the thought will be
made fact and verify itself!”

There is one other argument for pragmatism, however, which
should not be overlooked. We have concluded that the only
criteria of truth are logic and observed fact, which is to ex-
clude the pragmatic criterion of practical utility. In striemess,
the criteria of logic and observed fact do not suffice to single
out just one hypothesis as true, invalidating all others. The
same body of factual evidence will always support a oluralir.’-
of self-consistent theories; and the ground upon which we
prefer one of these alternative thories is in fact some pragmatic
consideration of convenience, familiarity, or simplicity. Thus
there is and will always remain a pragmatic element in knowl-
edge. But is this an argument for or against the descriptive
cogency of knowledge? We can use it in several ways. We can
argue that science is never quite descriptive, since it involves
some consideration of human convenience. We can say that the
alternative theories are descriptively equivalent, since they

I^RAGMATISM 505

12, Dewey, J*, Democracy and Education. New York, Tte Mac-
millan Company, 1916, -

I j, The Quest for Certainty. New York, Minton Balch find

Company, 1929,

Reconstruction in Philosophy. New York, Henry Holt

and Company, 1920.

ij, Experience and Nature. La Salle, III, The Open Court

Publishing Company. 1925.

1 5, Liberalism and Social Action. New York, G, P. Put-

nam’s Sons, 1935.

17. Logic, the Theory of Inquiry. New York, Henry Holt

and Company, 1938.

18. Dewey, J., and Tufts, J. H., Ethics. New York, Henry Holt

and Company, 1908.

19. Dewey, J., and others. Creative Intelligence. New York, Henry

Holt and Company, 1917.

20. Ratner, E. ed.. The Philosophy of Devcey. New York, Henry

Holt and Company, 1928. Selections.

21. Moore, A. W., Pragmatism and Its Critics. Chicago, University

of Chicago Press, ipio.

22. Mead, G. H., The PhUoscphy of the Act. Chicago, University

of Chicago Press, 1938.

23. Otto, M. C., The Human Enterprise. New York, F. S. Crofts

and Company, 1940.

24. Laird, J., Recent Philosophy. London, Thornton Butterworth,

Ltd., 1936,

POSITIVISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENC3E

507

this side of ultimate reality. But the term “positivism” was
chiefly propagated by nineteenth-century Auguste Comte.
Comte agreed with Kant that science is the sole authentic
knowledge, and that it is still only phenomenal; but he refused
to appeal beyond science, as did Kant, to a faculty of moral
cognition able to grasp noumenal being, t.e. reality itself. Comte
wished to revive the rationalistic faith of the eighteenth-cen-
tury Enlightenment; but he was sufliciently influenced by the
empirical criticism of Hume and Kant to be desirous of avoid-
ing metaphysics. His proposal was to moderate the claim of
science, by allowing that empirical or natural know'leii^
reaches conclusions which are less than absolute, and which
describe only the phenomenal realm accessible to direct per-
ception; yet at the same time he wished to establish science as
the sole reliable cognition accessible to man. This estimate of
science he called “positivism,” intending to distinguish scien-
tific method, as the sole approach to positive and verifiable
knowledge, from the methods used by the theologan and the
metaphysician. As Touchstone modestly said of Audrey, “A
poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own,” so the
positivist deprecates any claim to realistic knowledge, yet
ascribes exclusively to natural science whatever knowledge man
may possess.

TTus positivistic outlook persisted tliroughout the nineteenth
century, being especially favored among scientists and those
close to science. In Germany, shortly after the mid-century,
it was given a new formulation. Albert Lange used positivism
as his basis for an attack upon materialistic metaphysics. Ac-
cepting as his initial postulate the critical positivism of Kant,
Lange proceeded to show that materialism violates Kant’s pro-
hibition of dogmatic metaphysics, in that it carries the categories
of science beyond human experience into pure spcc-alation;
but he then diverged from Kant in his naturalistic account of
the origin of the categories. For Kant, these categories were
fixed forms of thought, transcending the variable content of

POSITIVISM AND THE PHItOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

509

these physical entities as existing in another psychical realm,
not that of the physical entities themselves; and so we proceed
to an absolute dualism of mind and matter, with its insoluble
problems. But in fact, Mach meant, we know directly only
one sort of entities, namely immediate sensations with their
interrelations; and both “physical” and “psychical” facts belong
in this one realm.

We need not appeal, therefore, to an external reality lying
beyond the realm of experience, and other than it. Our usual
supposition, which is that we explain phenomena by showing
them to be the effects of real things lying back of phenomena,
is quite unnecessary, and presumably fdse. We are justified
in believing only what is actually observed and attested by
science — all further belief is gratuitous and “metaphysical.”
We need to postulate, therefore, only the phenomenal realm.

Mach also pointed out that definitions of scientific objects
are conditioned by the experimental procedures pursued in
their study. He recognized three criteria of scientific truth.
First, we should accept as true only those relational complexes,
i.e. theories, which can be reduced to sensational elements.
Second, we should require logical consistency, even though
this requires theoretical constructions going beyond what is
strictly verifiable in experience. And third, our hypotheses
should attain a maximum simplicity, economy, and utility as
the agencies of precise description and accurate prediction. In
these three requirements, Mach recognized the three aspects of
cegnitien which have variously led to realism, idcali^ and
pragmatism; but because he balances each aspect against die
others, preferring none, he identifies himself with no one of
these views.

Similarly complex and inclusive is the positivism of other
late nineteenth-century thinkers. The most notable and bril-
liant of these was Henri Poincare (1854-1912), the leadmg
mathematician of his time. The logical element in knowledge
is found by Poincare to arise in mathematical intuition, w’hich

posrrmsM and the philosophy of science 511

and host of knowledge, and the legitimate seat of intellectual
and political authority. The moral sense of the individual, felt
as obligation to God or mankind or moral law, is really a sub-
conscious awareness of society, induced by the pervasive force
which is exerted by society upon individual thought and con-
duct. Sociology is the smdy of this ultimate, real, and authorita-
tive being which is society. Religion, law, moral theory, art,
economic theory and practice, science, and even logic are all,
according to this ’’^sociologisme" only the instruments and ex-
pressions of the “collective mind.”

This doctrine looks back by way of Comte’s sociology to
Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will. In the writer’s opinion,
it is one of the more perverse and dangerous fallacies of our
tine. The “collective mind” can be used to justify extreme
nationalism, racialism, or other immoral and antisocial preju-
dice. In the name of science, this collectivism denies the ob-
jectivity of scientific truth, and teaches that every society must
have its peculiar science rooted in a peculiar logic. As the fount
of morality, it would erect the collectivistic state, exercising an
absolute authority which is implicitly accepted, it says, even
in the individuars deepest sense of moral obligation. In the
name of religion, it denies the objective truth of religion, and
makes religious faith only conformity to collective opinion, or
loyalty to one’s tribe. A similar doctrine, pursued by the Ger-
man exponents of Kultur-philosaphie, encouraged the move-
ment to Nazism. Nowhere is the moral confusion of European
society so evident and so disastrous as in this pseudoscientific
sociologism.

Yet we have to recognize that this aberrance of thought,
with its deification of society and convention, is a groping
effort to do justice to the moral basis of knowledge, which
is not to be so unhappily identified with “convention.” It is
this moral basis which gives to science its universality, and
prevents it from becoming protnucial, racial, national, and
“sociological.” It is this moral basis, we shall see, which

POSITIVISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 513

of the symbols as these are defined by his manual, he finds that
the two sides of the identity are only different ways of saying
the same thing. Thus the identity is an analytic proposition be-
cause it only reveals, upon analysis, the meanings of the sym-
bols as defined; it is a tautological or self-evident proposition
because it follows of necessity from the definitions of the
symbols used.

To show that mathematical theory can be reduced to logical
theory, i.e. .to definitions of symbols together with the results
of logical cpent:~r.s upon the definitions, was to show that
mathematicd theory is not a descriptive science making state-
ments about the structures and processes of nature. Mathemati-
cal systems can be constructed ad libitwn, and they may be
of any sort we please. If we do not like irrational numbers,
we may construct a theory in which these will not occur. If
we are not satisfied with the three dimensions of height, breadth,
and depth, we may construct a geometry with four or forty
dimensions. Thus the apparent necessity or certainty of mathe-
matical propositions (two and two must be four, cannot be
five) stems initially from our fidelity to the meanings we have
allotted to symbols. “Two” means “one and one”; so “two and
two” means “one and one and one and one”; but “one and
one and one and one” means “four.” If we had criginclly de-
fined “one and one and one and one” to be “five,” then “two
and two” would be “five,” and “two and two are four” would
be nonsense.

Because Kant had based his whole conception of science
upon the mistaken premise that mathematical prepositions are
at once necessary and descriptive, the Principia Mathematica
did in fact undermine and explode both the Kantian philoropV’
itself, and the metaphysical absolutisms which dspir.n.-;:
upon it. But to dettiolish the Kantian philosophy avas not to
remove the’ indubitable fact 'which Kant’s philosophy had en-
deavored to explain. This indubitable fact is the theoretical or
systematic character of scientific knowledge. Science proceeds

JPOSmviSM AND THE PHIUBOPHY OF SCIENCE 515

positivistic in tendency. But this positivistic stage seems already
to be approaching its close.

The categories of science which support the superstructure
of natural knowledge, said Kant, arise from and express the
mind’s essential function, which is to integrate human ex-
perience. We cannot, accordingly, simply attribute to external
reality itself the structures defined by these categories. If the
structures initially express a unity which is imposed by the
mind upon experience, they nee ’ not define a unity in external
reality. There is good reason, Kant said, to deny to the cate-
gories this external reference; because if we assume them to
possess it, we are led to antinomies or self-contradictions. To-
day, the function which Kant ascribed to the categories is
seen to be fulfilled by the faculty of logical improviscdors,
which generates symbolic systems such as mathematics; but
because these logical systems are made at our pleasure, without
resort to empirlcd verification, there seems to be no reason
why they should describe anything external to ourselves; and
when we do impute to them such descriptive cogency, we are
led to nonsensical or meaningless statements which parallel the
antinomies of pure reason discovered by Kant. This is the
argument of the logical posimist; and it is not mistaken to see
in it a modernized and corrected form of the Kantian criticism
of absolutistic metapfipics.

Like Kant, however, the logical positivist entertains a lively
sense of the importance, the inescapability, and the self-in-
tegrity of this logical structure in knowledge, in spite of the
difficulties which it may raise with respect to our faith in
thoretical description. Only where experience is so integrated
into theoretical unity, the positivist says, do we have authentic
knowledge. The ideal or objective of science, accordingly, is
a theoretical system which would include all experience, at
least insofar as this is theoretically conceivable. To this ideal of
a “unity of science” the logical positivist calls all intelligent
and well-meaning men. All scientists, all scholars, all educated

JPOSmVISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 5x7

Or shall we insist that the logical element, because it is integral
with the theoretical descripti'^n. is part of the factual knowl-
edge, and therefore invested with descriptive meaning? Is
logic, as Kant would have inquired, at once self-evident and
descriptive?

On this issue, the three dominant philosophical traditions
again make themselves felt and arouse controversial debate.
The realist argues for the descriptive cogency of logic, and
affirms its power to define an objective and real structure in
the world. He may assert that the separation of logic from the
descriptive material of science can never be quite complete;, so
that logical theory remains a widest and most abstract descrip-
tive knowledge. The pragmatist takes a middle position. The
logical theory, he says, is the agency or instrument used in
problem-solutions, just as is all scientific theory; and it will
develop and shape itself as conditioned by the matrk of con-
crete knowledge. Logic is therefore neither extraneous to the
material facts, nor itself a statement of material fact; but it
summarizes operations of analysis by means of which problems
are solved. The positivist, at the other extreme position, holds
that logical structure is separable and has been separated, and
that its independence of the factual material to which it is
applied, and within which it is incorporated to produce “knowl-
edge,” constitutes a very real problem, which realism and
pragmatism do not take sufficiently seriously. Contemporary
positivism, in short — and this is its great merit — ^insists upon a
fresh and thorcugkgoing examination of the relationslup of
the rational element to the empirical element in knowledge;
and it insists that this examination must start from the new
grasp of logical form achieved in our own time.

This inquiry was advanced by a group of men sometimes
known as the “Vienna circle.” (xMach spent his later years in
Vienna.) In his Tractatus logico-philosopldczis, Wittgenstein
pointed to certain dif ficulties which would seem to prohibit
a realistic theory of knowledge. Every system of logic, he con-

POSITIVISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

5*9

the scene of a crime, might do service here. But it is evident that
even the barest description of empirical fact must contain not
only logical structure, but a good deal of everyday opinion or
scientific hypothesis. There is no direct way of stating what is
left in natural knowledge, when all theoretical form is taken
away. The logical form and the empirical content of knowl-
edge are not simply glued together, it is evident, in natural
knowledge. It is upon the false supposition that the two ele-
ments are so simply related that logical positivism breaks down.

Already, however, the thinkers in this group arc attempting
new approaches to the problem of the relationship of logic to
fact. Any scientific or other description of faa (or, for that
matter, any fantasy) is the rendition into communicable lan-
guage of something which is not language. We may, therefore,
study language itself, and especially scientific language, as a
sort of medium in which Imowledge occurs. Much as the
geometry of space enters into every material configuration
existing in space, so the pattern of language will enter into
every verbal description. We may turn, therefore, to a study
of language-pattern, and discover in this way the linguistic
structure which is incorporated in all explicit knowledge. This
structure can be isolated, and reveals itself to be constituted
of several elements. First, there is syntax, of which we learn
something at school in our study of grammar. But school gram-
mar is peculiar to one language, and we need a universal
grammar. We possess this in the highly developed grammar
or syntax of scientific language. The propositions which make
up syntax consist wholly of statements about symbols and
their relations. They refer to nothing outside of language.
Thus a syntactical system can be elaborated which Im no
meaning in the ordinary sense, because it refers to nothing out-
side of itself; yet it is precisely definable and completely in-
telligible. All pure mathematics, e.g. algebra, is such syntax.
Syntactical systems can be given descriptive meanings by a
process of interpretation. We first elaborate a purely algebmic

POSITIVISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 52 1

It constitutes really a new and corrected rarionalism. It agrees
with the empiricist that logical study only abstracts the formal
structure of empirical yet it also agrees with the

realist and rationalist, who holds that logical or rational form
constitutes something which regulates and conditions knowl-
edge, and which is not to be identified with the empirical con-
tent of knowledge. This movement raises again, in short, the
issue which has long divided thinkers into the opposed camps
of rationalism and empiricism: and it does this with the inten-
tion and the promise of reconciling their differences.

As yet, the proponents of this new and empirical rationalism
are still somewhat uncertain of their way. They are embarrassed
by their antecedent tradition, namely the nineteenth-century
positivism which stoutly rejected all final “metaphysical” state-
ment. They do not see that their clarification of the nature
and function of logic may rid metaphysics of its terrors, by
leaving wholly free and unconditioned the progress of em-
pirical hypothesis. In our concluding chapters w’e will develop
this possibility. Here we are concerned only to estimate and
do justice to the important insight of logical positivism. This
movement again makes clearly evident the a priori and formal
element which abides in all theoretical knowledge, and indeed
in all explicit description that makes use of language. Syntax,
grammar, “the word” are always with us; and to use language
is to affirm certain presuppositions of language, which impose
themselves in this way upon all thought.

So we are brought back after a full circle to the point where
philosophy began in Greek antiquity. “In the beginning was
the Logos” — there is no thought which is independent of logic.
How shall we explain, what shall we deduce from this ubiquity
of logical form.^. Shall we say that the dependence of thought
upon logic is the Achilles’ heel of thought, because logic is
merely verbal convention, just language, an arbitrary and sub-
jective structure peculiar to man and human nature? This w^ay
leads to skepticism. Or shall we say that nature itself finds voice

POSITIVISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 523

15. Planck, M., The Philosophy of Physics, trans. W. H. Johnston,

New York, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1936.

16. Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophictis. New York,

Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922.

17. Popper, K., The Logic of Discovery. Vienna, J. Springer, 1935.

18. Carnap, R., The Unity of Science, trans. M. Black. London,

George Routledge and Sons, 1934.

19. Philosophy and Logical Syntax. London, George Rout-

ledge and Sons, 1935.

20. The Lo^cal Syntax of Language. New York, Harcourt,

Brace and Company, 1937.

21. Introduction to Semantics. Cambridge, Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1942.

22. The Formalization of Logic. Cambridge, Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1943.

23. Reichenbach, H., Experience and Prediction. Chicago, Univer-

sity of Chicago Press, 1938.

24. From Copernicus to Einstein. Boston, Longmans, Green

and Company, 1942.

2j. Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York, The Mac-

millan Company, 1947.

26. Morris, C. W., Loffcal Positivism, Pragniatisin, and Scientific

Empiricism. Paris, Hermann and Company, 1937.

27. Lewis, C. I., Mind and the World Order. New York, Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 1929.

28. Symbolic Loffc. New York, D. Applcton-Ccntury

Company, Inc., 1933.

29. Lewis, G. N., The Anatomy of Science. New Haven, Yale

University Press, 1926.

30. Frank, P., Between Physics and Philosophy. Cambridge, Har-

vard University Press, 1941.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS HISTORY 525

in two of its aspects. We could not ay that every scientist
has been a political liberal, nor that every political advance has
consciously premised itself upon science. But on the whole,
scientific and political progress have supported and stimulated
each other. Together they have defined and propagated the
sanity which is liberalism in thought and conduct.

It is still convenient to divide the evolution of western
civilization into three epochs, ancient, medieval, and modem.
In some respects, the modem period does return to the intel-
lectual ideals of antiquity. It again pursues a theoretical science,
and establishes a constitutional form of government. But mod-
em civilization is more different from antiquity than like it.
Antiquity was rationalistic in its science and conservative in its
politics. Modem society is empiricai in its science and progres-
sive in its moral and political practice. Modem thought has
recovered and absorbed ancient thought, but has subjected it
to relentless criticism. This radical difference between modem
and ancient society has its cause and explanation in the medieval
centuries.

When we say that the science of antiquity was rationalistic,
we mean that science was then conceived to possess a core of
absolute axioms, which supposedly were known to the reason
independently of experience. This core of axioms was science
net. Science gross contained in addition the many applicadons
of this rational trath to particular fact. The human reason pro-
vided science, the animal senses provided the material which
was to be scientifically understood. And when we say that
modem science is empirical, we mean that science is now con-
ceived to consist of all of the generalizations which may be
garnered from sensed fact. These generalizations may be
woven together into organized theories; but the theories remain
summaries of experienced fact, they are not regarded as rational
and absolute traths. Whereas Greek science made rationally
intuited principles the test of truth, modem science makes
observed fact the test of trath. In this respect, the modem intel-

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS HISTORY 527

they had deposed their kmgs and made the law their governor,
with themselves the executors of the law. They were aware
that their political liberty distinguished them from the “bar-
barian” peoples about them, who still submitted to the personal
despotism the Greeks have taught us to call “t3rraxmy.” Yet
these tyrannies finally destroyed Greek freedom; and it is
significant that the downfall of Greek liberty was due not to
military defeat, but to certain internal weaknesses in Greek
society. The Greeks could defeat imperial Persia; and th^
would have similarly repelled every invader, if they had not
been destroyed from within by disunity and internecine strife.
What defeated them was their failure to make their free
and constitutional government the agency of political pr<^-
ress.

The rise and expansion of imperial Persia was not merely a
military threat to the Greek cities. It was also a moral threat.
There were those within the Greek cities who spontaneously
prostrated themselves before that imperial might, and counseled
their fellow citizens not to attempt resistance, but to appease
and ally themselves with the irresistible invader. It required a
loyalty religious in its intensity and almost fanatical in its
courage to defy that advancing Persian tide. So the Greek
leaders called upon their peoples for a religious fjuth in their
institutions; and to establish or confirm them in their faith, the
Greek statesman became a thinker, a scientist and •ohnosorher.
He taught the Greeks that in defending their
governments they only did what true religion required of them.
The whole cosmos, he argued, is a constitution^ polity, ruled
by a divine and universal law. In all of its motions, the cosmos
manifests this eternal and immutable law. And to establish this
religious truth, the Greek thinker created a natural science
moving from observable fact to a theoretical knowledge of
that cosmic structure which, he said, is natural and divine law'.
The Logos, he taught, is the true God. The civic constitution
is the Logos in its human context, and loyalty to constitutional

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS HIST<»Y 529

always A successful faction imposes its will

upon society, and claims for its legislative acts a moral or re-
ligious sanctity which does not invest them, its actual authority
being just sheer power. Law, they concluded, is only conven-
tion, a usage or irr.pcsirior. without real authority. Justice is,
the rule of the stronger; and the stronger may be the unscrupu-
lous but skilful tyrant, the self-willed but able oligarchy, or
the majority, individually w'eak but strong in their number.
And the sophist was perhaps more willing than his opponent
to put his thesis to the test of observable fact. Look at nature,
he said, and you will see everywhere the rule of the stronger,
the survival of the fittest, and the extermination of the weak.
Nature is war, society is war, peace is a truce or a temporary
balance of powers. There is no moral foundation for govern-
ment because there is no moral law in nature — ^unless we give
the name of moral law to this natural propriety by which the
strong compels the weak. But in truth, according to the sophist,
nature knows no law. Science has no authority. Only power
has authority.

The Greek thinker, struggling to meet and defeat this
sophistry, never perceived its full strength. Failing to distin-
guish the half-truth which lends it plausibility, he failed to
detect clearly its error. The half-truth in sophistry, Greek or
modem, is its recognition that poioer lies in individual things —
and ultimately only there. The sophistic error *was to deduce
from this correct premise the mistaken conclusion that the
power of the individual precludes moral law and civic justice.
The Greek thinker, in Im effort to combat the sophistic error,
threw out both the error and the truth. Convinced of the
cogency of his science, he now examined that science more
intently, to discover wherein lay its generative insight. What he
discovered was the theoretical form of science, which gives to
science its unity, its stability, and whatever else distinguishes
it from casual opinion. The error of the sophist, Parmenides
decided, is that he ousts his senses. He sees individual things.

the significance of this history

531

their near-emptiiiess they depict the concrete substance of
truth.

Plato made a valiant attempt to correct this Parmenidean
metaphysics by compromising with the sophistic irrationalism.
With Parmenides he agreed that the reason apprehends the
eternal One; but naturd science, he said, arises when this ra-
tional intuition is applied to the changing and particularized
world of thmgs. Science is thus the rediscovery of eternal and
universal form in the sensed particular changes of nature. This
theory of knowledge, Plato sometimes implied, requires a
dualisdc view of nature, which is properly conceived as being
compounded of two sorts of being. One is the immutable
Form, which Plato called “Being”; the other is motion itself,
called by Plato “nonbemg.” In this Platonic dualism, the senses
are allowed to provide the material of existent fact, in which
the Being apprehended by reason is variously, inccanpletcly,
and transiendy manifested. So sensory knowledge and em-
pirical science are not sheer illusion, but a confused and imr
perfect version of radonal knowledge.

Plato seemed to have saved the Greek faith in the “intellect,”
i.e. in theoredcal reason. He turned back the dde of overt
skepdcism, which did not rally again for two thousand years.
Because this Greek metaphysics also defined eternal Being as
divine and Good, it saved ^ the profounder Greek faith in
the idendty of intellectual and moral truth. The' reason, intuit-
ing the Being which is the origin of all intelligible structure
in the world, discovers those true forms which are the proper
destinies or ends of natural motions. Everything seeks to mani-
fest its true form; and since these forms are all redprocally ad-
justed, as aspects of the one Being, this effort of things to
realize their forms sustains the vast and eternal economy of
nature.

But if Greek metaphysics saved the letter of intellectual and
moral faith, it did not save natural science, which is the full
confession of this faith. It allowed the senses to illustrate the

the significance of this history

553

pessimian investing pagan civilization, which evinced itself
in a nostalgia for the remote and golden past, iinaily possessed
itself of the Greek spirit in this otherworldly, transcendental
Platonism. The later Greeks, in particular the Stoics, no longer
distinguished ideal justice from universal cosmic law; and this
had the advantage of detaching the concept of justice from
the city-state, to make it the concept of a universal moral law,
antecedent to all government and independent of it. But the
“blessed city of God” of the Stoics, although it contained all
who acknowledged its moral government, was still an invisable
realm, not to be sought in political actualities. Greek meta-
physics was the consolation of a defeated and conquered peo-
ple, who magnified their dream of a justice they could no longer
hope to possess.

This consolatory metaphysical dream became philosophy,
became even “science,” and remained this for two millennia.
No wonder that under later antiquity a rebellion moved against
the Greek formalism that had become so unrealistic. Chrikiaa-
ity made this rebellion vocal and effective, when it turned
from theoretical to religious symbolism, in order to announce
its optimistic gospel of salvation come to earth.

Greek metaphysics seemed to weather this storm of religious
revolution. It emerged again in Christian theology and in a
scholastic philosophy auxiliary to theology. Early Christianity
had looked beyond the law to prophetic revelation, beyond the
state to the congregation united by caritas or love, and beyond
cosmic structure to the creative power which fashioned struc-
ture even in creating matter. But Greek legalism restored itself
in a feudal eccleSiasticism, Greek formali^ restored itself in
a Platonic theology. Finally, however, in the Reformation and
its consequences, the Christian revolution against pagan thought
was consummated, to produce the science, the political theory
and practice, and the emancipated society of the modem world.

There was really but one reform, one rebirth, one revolt;
ushering in this modem world. It was the revolt which trans-

537

the SiranFICANCE OF THIS HISTORY

ever? “Natural rights” means underived and absolute powers.
The concept of natural law may conceivably be derived from
the concept of indiiddual rights— whether it can be so derived
is a question. But neither the concept of natural rights, nor the
actuality of natural rights, is derivable from the concept of
natural law. What our fathers meant, when they used the
familiar verbiage of natural law to establish natural rights, was
that the existence of individual rights is an absolute and non-
debatable axiom. The individual is de£ned as the possessor of
inalienable rights.

We are now beginning to see how the problem facing
modem society must be stated. We must ask; How does one
establish this principle of individual natural rights? The
foimders of modem government believed the principle to be
a rational intuition, self-evident and infallible. They placed it
beyond debate, exactly as we place beyond debate Ae truth
that one and one are two. Yet we see that it cannot literally be
placed beyond dispute. It is even now disputed; and there seems
to be some evidence, provided by a scientific and empirical
study of social process, against its trath. Can this evidence be
outweighed? Or, even better, can it be anal5rzed, and discov-
ered not to disprove, but to confirm more surely than ever,
the principle of individual rights upon which modem justice
has established itself?

It can be analyzed and shown to confirm the democratic
principle. But to do this, we must undertake an analyas which
goes deeper than what is ordinarily called scientific analysis.
We must undertake philosophical analysis that probes to a truth
which is implicidy obeyed and applied by all science, and
which is indeed generative of science. We have to penetrate
to philosophical truth. Our motive in seeking this truth is
political — ^we wish to assure ourselves of the righteousness of
democratic government. But we find that pliilosophical truth
also conditions our faith in science. Democratic theory or prac-
tice, we find, is not subject to criticism upon any ground of

the significance of this history

539

fact to submit to the necessities of logic, such submisaon bdiw
the necessary and sufficient condition of the theoretical formu-
lation of fact in science. But hoio, on the showing of Hume
that we find no necessity in nature, do we justify Ms seenmg
asswnption that nature is subject to logical necessity? Is not
this predication to nature of logical conformity just a con-
venient fiction? What evidence is there that nature is somehow
inherendy logical? How do we harmonize this rational de-
mand, that particular fact shall always conform to some theory,
with our empirical insistence that particular fact may be any-
thing we observe it to be?

Modem civilization seems to stand rooted in paradojc. The
individual, we say, is soverei^; yet he is, of course, bound by
a constitution which prescribes and limits the exercise of his
sovereignty. Particular fact, we say, is the source and miifrio n
of true theory, even as the individual is the source and the
criterion of just law; yet particular fact may not transgress the
requirements of logic, nor reject the conditions of its theoret-
ical comprehension by the scientist. The constimtion still Hmitv
individual freedom, logic still limits hypothesis and faa. We
live in self-contradiction, holding the individual to be at once
free yet bound, holding particular fact to be and not to be the
sole criterion of truth.

Might we not say that this self-contradiction has worked
well, and justified itself in practice? Has not the democratic
constitution supported a century and a half of liberal and
progressive legislation? Has not the logical constimtion of
science permitted the fullest accommodation of theoretical
hypothesis to particular and observed occurrence? Why
worry? Why not accept, as a mystery which somehow sup-
ports all that is intelligible and good, this self-contradiction at
the root of science and society?

Because this paradox which has underlain modem theory
and practice is today the source of intellectual, moral and
political confusion, to a degree that threatens civilization itself.

the significance of this history

54 *

tore. Our best reason is our most comprehensive summary of
particular facts.

There is no doubt of the truth of Hume’s contention, and no
defense against his critical polemic. Yet if his truth were the
whole truth, there would be possible no distinction between
human science and animal cognition. The higher animalg whose
sensory faculties most resemble our own should also be phya-
cists and chemists, and speculate concerning canine or oAer
freedom. What Hume neglected was the agency in science of
language, with all that language implies. He overlooked the
cognitive interest, and did not appreciate the logical instru-
mentalities which this interest has generated.

So Kant attempted to correct Hume’s error without sacrifice
of Hume’s truth. Science, he said, is the effort of the cognitive
will to unify experience. It brings to this task the agencies
which are reason. These are internal to mmd; and we may take
note of them in the explicit and necessary axioms, e.g. those of
mathematics, which are basic to all description. Science is com-
pounded on the one hand of contingent and particular fact, but
on the other hand of the rational forms which bring this mate-
rial into theoretical system. But on what evidence do we
believe that this imposition of mental forms produces a sdenoe
truly descriptive of external reality? There is no evidence, Kant
concluded. We cannot suppose that science describes reality as
it is in itself. The world described by science is a phenomenal
world; it is appearance, not reality. The true or noumenal
reality is known to us only in moral judgment. This is imme^
diate, final, and absolute; but it grasps only the particular situa-
tion regulated by the moral act, Kant did justice to the rational
element in science, but only at the sacrifice of our faith in the
power of science to describe reality.

There followed the metaphysicians, who made Elands failure
to establish scientific truth their excuse for a return to dog-
matism. Hume and Kant have shown, they argued, that em-
pirical science reaches only phenomenal knowledge, which is

the significance of this history

truth or to attempt justice, we must be able to say what “truth”
and “justice” mean. And to define these terms in such a way as
to leave truth and justice accessible to man is to say something
absolute and incontrovertible about this world, in which truth
is sought and justice aspired to. What is this aWute or philo-
sophical truth which makes reasonable the pursuits of
knowledge and justice?

We are now ready to undertake successful assault upcm this
problem, which has hitherto defeated philosophical inquiry. Its
solution, we have learned, requires us to establish the identity
of the empirical and logical criteria of truth, the false distinc-
tion of which has hitherto prevented the reconciliation of
rationalism, emphasizing the logical criterion, with empiricism,
emphasizing the criterion of fact. Science requires hypotheas
to be at once logically self-consistent and conastent with
observed particular fact. We need to know that these two
demands can both be fulfilled in a single hypothesis, and that
the satisfaction of one demand does not preclude that of the
other. What we shall show is that there are not two demands.
There is in truth only one requirement, which is at once
rational and empirical. Logic, we shall show, only implements
the empirical requirement that hypothesis shall conform to dl
observed fact. It is the word “all” that generates logic— logic
secures impartiality and comprehensiveness of hypotheas. TTie
logical requirement is the demand that the empirical require-
ment be fully satisfied, and not satisfied only in part. The solu-
tion is as simple as that. This is the conjunction of reason and
sense, fulfilling the moral requirement of justice or impartiality.

So we shall bring to an end the ancient controversy between
rationalism and empiricism, and establish at last the truthful-
ness of science and the power of the human intellect to reach a
realistic knowledge. The controversy was not fruitless, because
it was the necessary preparation for this reconciliation. The
reconciliation demonstrates the simple but solemn truth, stated
long ago by Socrates — ^that intelligence and righteousness are

27 THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH

T

XN THIS CHAPTER WE BRING THE DEVELOPMENT OT

philosophy to a successful issue by resolving die
problem which has defeated past thought* ^ence requires
hypothesis to conform to fact, yet seems also to insist that fact
shall conform to logical necesaty. Democratic govennacat
affirms the sovereignty of the individual, yet seems also to
require that the individual submit to law. Why should par^
ticular fact defer to the requirements of logic? How should a
sovereign individual submit to law?

There can, we intimated, be only one resolution of this
problem. The two requirements, apparently contradictoty,
must resolve into one and the same requirement. This has
usually been perceived, and the philosopher has attempted to
show either that the logical and legal requirement includes
the other (rationalism) or that the logical and legal require^
ment is not valid (empiricism). But this contempt of one oc
the other requirement led only to mterminable cootrwecsy
between opposed schools of thought*

In modem times the problem has been beclouded by a mis*
conception common to both schools. Because it was clear that

545

the establishment of philosophical troth 547

have inquired into its philosophical implicarions. The inertia of
past intellectual habit makes such inquiry difficult, even for
those whose labors initiate the new conception- Usually a
generation has to pass, and another generation grow to matu-
rity in the new way of thinking, before the full implication
of a revolutionary hypothesis is seen.

The revolution we refer to is popularly associated with the
ncme. of Einstein, and properly so, although many others have
participated in it. We may define it as a departure from cer-
tain of the principles of the “clasacal” science of Newton- It
might be called the inauguration of romantic science, usar^
the word “romantic” somewhat in its literary or aesthetic
sense.

We are not concerned here, fortunately, with the whole
current and consequence of this revolution in phyacal sdenoe.
Our concern is limited to one point, namely the imffficatian of
the new science for our conception of the relation between
mathematical theory and the science of phyacal nature. The
effect of the Emsteinian hypothesis is to prov^ a new and
liberating insight into the relation of physicd sdence to mathe-
matical theory. Since the time of Parmemdes, U. the fifth
century b.c., it had been assumed that ph^cal hypothec m^
defer to mathematical theory. The axioms of
were held to be absolute self-evident truths vouched for by the
reason itself. We must agree that these axioms seei^ self-
evident; and prior to Einstem there had fa^ estaWuiwd no
instance railing into question their exact applicability to natiOT.
Plato, it is true, aUowed that nature, because of its mate^
element, might fall short of exact confonnity to maihemati^
necessity; but Descartes and the modems were more strirt,
and required the exact conformity of observable fact m ma^
matical principles. It is this uncompromismg i%or of modem
science that has led to the correction of its an<^ error.

Until our own century, then, mathemaoesd ration^
seemed invulnerable. Mathematical axioms seemed rational and

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL 'raUTH

549

they were strange difEcuk to handle, the minute meas-
urements testing their approximation to fact were not at that
time practicable, and Euclidean geometry satisfied every scien-
tific need; therefore they were placed on the shelf of mathemat-
ical curiosities. However, even the construction of these new
geometries was disproof of Kant’s contention that Euclidean
geometry rests on a priori synthetic principles; for the new
geometries rest equally upon “self-evident principles,” identical
with those of the old geometry; and the several geometries,
new and old, cannot all be true.

This conclusion was empirically confirmed early in the
century when Einstein and his successors revived the non-
Euclidean geometries, using them as alternative and divergent
hypotheses in the description of physical fact. It was found
that Euclidean geometry sufficiently defines ph)^cal morion
only in certain limited cases; and the physicist in hk most
general hypotheses now creates his geometry to order, in the
fight of empirical fact. Geometry, in short, is henceforth physir
cd hypothesis, not rational intuition of self-evident tra^

This removed geometry from the domain of “rational
science”; but arithmetic remained. It could still be argued that
arithmetical principles constitute a domain of rationri knowl-
edge, necessarily applicable to all parricular fact. If «>, arith-
metic would still provide the needed evidence that there exists
a faculty of rational intuition, independent of and superior
to empirical hypothesis.

That arithmetic does not comprise a science of this sort was
shown by Russell and Whitehead, whose logical studies were
contemporaneous with the developmmt of the physical theory
of relativity which so transformed geometry. These two
thinkers invalidated Kant’s contention that arithmetical prop-
ositions are at once a priori and synthetic, which would
mean that they are self-evident or necessary truths descriptive
of universal nature. The Principin M/ttbetustics ^owed that
number-theory can be reduced to, or r^laced by, a ^istem of

the establishment of philosophical truth

55 *

such a symbolic system, and develop geometrical symbolism
purely as logicians and without thought of the descriptive truth
or falsity of the system; and such study is “pure geometry”
or “mathematics.” But we may also consider geometry as
descriptive hypothesis, and study its conformity to physical
or astrophysical fact; and when we do this, we are empirical
scientists. This profitable division of labor into analjrtical and
experimental studies should be exercised in every theoretical
science, the lopcian developing symbolic systems, and the
empirical scientist applying and testing these systems in field
and laboratory.

But we are not so much concerned with the new scientific
developments opened up by this recent intellectual revolution,
important though these are, as with its implication for philo-
sophical truth. Its immediate philosophical coiise<][nence is its
decisive verdict against rationalistic philosophy in favor of
empirical philosophy.

There is, it makes clear, no self-evident rational knowl«%e,
at least of the sort pretended. Our only knowledge of nature
is empirical knowledge, comprised of hypotheses of high
probability. Logic and mathematics are not natural knowled^
but constitute an art of symbolic construction or notation; and
any descriptive character they may possess derives from the
empirical material from which then: logical elements were
originally abstracted. It will be some time, perhaps, before this
implication is widely perceived and becomes a cmnmoiiplace
of thought. Old errors live on, and rationalistic metaphyacians
will still advance a “concrete logic.” But there can be little
doubt of the issue. The newly enfranchised' sdence and the
expanded “mathematical logic” are here to stay; and their
implications will steadily become evident.

But this is only half the story. Admitting that neirfjer logic
nor mathematics nor any other “rational sdence” msy confirm
scientific hypothesis or prescribe to empirical science; admit-
ring that language, with the Itgic which is the syntax of laa-r

the establishment of philosophical truth

553

and replaced hy a new theoretical hypothesis conastem with
the recalcitrant fact.

Thus the effect of logic, stated in its simplest terms, is to
ensure that aU observed fact shall have its due place in the
symbolic construction which is scientific theory, and that no
particular fact shall be disfranchised. The symbolic construc-
tion which is the logic of a science does not express a concern
for logic and symbolization as such. These are only mpanc to
scientific impartiality toward fact.

Logic implements empirical impartiality toward observed
particular fact. This is its sole scientific function, as is demon-
strated in two ways. First, the scientist holds no brief for any
specific hypothesis as such, but he is always willing, just insofar
as he is an authentic scientist, to relinquish a theory which fails
to meet all of the evidence. He is not interested in theory as
such, he is interested in theory only as a device enabling - the
impartial accommodation of fact. Secondly, the scientist does
not insist upon, and no longer expects to find, a shigie theory
covering all fact. Modem theoretical science is incorrigibly
pluralistic, advancing physical theory, bioli^cal dieory, social
and psychological theory simultaneously and in independence
of one another. This relinquishment of the old rationalisac
goal of a single universal theory implicitly affirms the aoxiiiaiy
character of theoretical form and the instrumental character
of logic. If logical unity were an end or objective in itself, the
plurality of theories would be an indictment convicting science
of error — ^which is just what the rationalist frequently con-
siders it. But modem science, subservient only to evidence, has
substantially established the truth that natural processes present
diverse sfractures requiring for their description many theories,
not only one. There is, science increasingly assures ns, no sing^
theory of nature.

We reach here the momentous fact that is the solution of our
problem. The two criteria of truth, logic and particular fact,
are really one and the same criterion. Trae rationalism is em-

THE ESTABLISHJVIENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH

555

value, we know, are characters of real being, and real beiiw is
individud being. It follows that real value is by definition
diflferentiated. Value is difference, not sameness; nonconform-
ity, not orthodo^. Individuality alone has value. The ration-
alistic identification of value with likeness or structural unity,
which in modem times has generated the absolute and totali-
tarian state, is finally a blasphemy against justice, truth, and
God. Justice looks beyond sameness in order to appredatse indi-
vidual character, truth looks beyond identity in order to per-
ceive particular difference, God knows each creature in its
individual uniqueness. Yet the blasphemy was well meant; and
it was correct enough in its assumption that logic somehow indi-
cates the moral nature of nature, and unplements our apprehen-
sion of the morality of nature. The rationalistic error was to
mistake the nature and function of logic. It is n«: logic, we
saw, which requires the comprehension of nature nndf-r a single
theoretical hypothesis. Neither logic nor the logician requites
nature to be imified, homogeneous, same. Logic demands noth-
ing in the way of description or definition of nature; it ensnres
only that our statement of fact, whatever it be, shall neglect no
fact. Or rather, it ensures this impartial comprehenaveness
fact if we will first, prior to all analysis, set ourselves to do just-
ice to all fact. If we will be just and empirical, logic will imple-
ment our wiU; but if we want to be dogmatic and unjust, logic
will no less subserve the elaboration of rationalistic tystems,
which may be imposed upon facts and upcm men as sanctified
truth. Logic is indifferently the tool of truth and of error. But
we would be unjust to logic if we emphasized its susceptibility
to abuse at the expense of our appreciation of its great service.
Given the will to truth, logic implements that wilL Thtis
is justified Augustine, who established a new civilization upon
the primacy of the will.

What is the will to truth? It is the will to do justice to
each and every particular fact. What is particular fact? It is our
apprehension of individual being at some time and place. All

557

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH

is effectiveness, power. The force and quality of every par-
ticular action determine those of the particular reaction.^c£nj-
mon sense and justice equally require a respect for particular
fact and individual being. Prudence and kindness are ultimately
one. Every injustice done to individual being of necessity
recoils upon the doer; and every mercy blesses him that gives
no less than him who takes.

This is the moral law of nature, as it is that of society. It is
the meaning of the metaphysical truth which affirms the reality
of individual being, and in consequence denies the reality of
“universal being.” These last two words are meaningless, un-
thinkable; they comprise a self-contradiction. There is no um-
versal being, there are only individual beings which in some
respects, but in no case in all reqiects, may be similar. The
rejects in which things are similar or disamilar must be deter-
mined by observation and eiqjeriment;’ and that is why em-
pirical science must be the rule of life, of sodety, and of God.

After six centuries, we have justified the doctrme of the
medieval nominalists whose real work, we remember, was the
establishment of empirical science. The nominalist denied the
reality of universal being in the interests of individual bemg^
but he was unable to do justice to the power of theoretical
knowledge. General ideas, he averred, exist only in the mind;
and this was to leave sdence without claim to objective truth.
We correct this error when we acknowledge the existence of
real similarities among individual things. If simiiarit^ are not
real, how should specific and individual differences be real?

We discover herein the integrity of modem thought Skice
Roscellinus, Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and their
successors initiated modem thought, there has moved forward
this single faith in the absoluteness and primaiy of individual
being. Out of it has been built an empirical science and an
industrial economy. Out of it has been generated a democratic
society, pledged to equalitarian justice among men. These two
developments are truly one. A sodety whhh industrializes

the establishment of philosophical truth

559

planation of specific similarities. There arises the quesdon, stili
empirical but philosophical in its breadth, why there should be
similarity at aU, of any sort. The Greek philosophers asked this
question, but would not wait for an answer. They replied at
once: It is of the essence of nature to present sinularities; for
nature is truly one, and its identity appears, compounded with
difference, in similarities.

But this is false. The true essence of nature is individuality
or difference of character. Similarity is overlaid. That tl«
inquiry into the causes of similarity is a sigiuficant, possible,
and profitable inquiry is demonstrated by every causal hypoth-
esis; but it was given a new and strilmg significance when
Darvrin showed that every organic siniilarity is the coa-
sequence of the mode of reproduction of living organisins, as
these are influenced by their environment. By a.«Jnrtg this
philosophical question about similarity in one spedai field,
Darwin revolutionized biology. But the question must be car-
ried into every field, and be asked finally of nature at large,
until we learn at last something of the creative power that has
moved in all things to fabricate this world. For we are inteiufed
to know even as God knows, in naked truth, and not “sec
through a glass, darkly.”

SCIENCE AND GOVEBUSTMENT

S6i

respect both to its intensity and to its objective, from their
free religion, which imposed upon the individual a religious
and moral responsibility not to be delegated to Ving or gover-
nor. Accordingly, the revolutionary founders of the first
modem republic, the short-lived Commonwealth, stated their
political faith in religious terms. Such statement would still be
fitting. We still hold liberty of conscience and thought to be
the primary freedoms, generating all others; but the religions
terminology would be invidious and misleading today, espe-
cially among peoples still intellectually dominated by audior-
itarian religion.

It is this selfsame religious faith, however, vidiich finds its
authentic statement in philosophical truth. There is but one
Truth, capable of infinite variety in its formulation. Religious
mysticism, which is what most modems mean by religion, is
the illuminated perception of the holiness which everywhere
invests individual being, i.e. reality. Philosophy corrects ration-
alistic theology when it translates this ineffable mystical experi-
ence into the sober statement, “Reality is individt^ being," and
proceeds to enlarge this simple trath into a descr^tivc science.
We still expound in this science the faith of those who maugu-
rated modem government; but the word “faith” now loMS its
equivocal meaning. It no longer means a belief transcen^ng
reason, knowledge, science. It means the truth which generates
reason, Icnowledge, and science.

It scarcely need be elaborated further that philosophical
trath, so far from being something that eludes demotetration,
is implicitly demonstrated in every demonstration of fact
whatsoever. Every scientific hypothesis applies ths truth, and
in its confirmation confirms it; nor does any descripuon of
fact have meaning or truth except in virtue of that one truth.
Every practical program has moral claim and final e&czcy m
the degree to wluch it is an acknowledgment of all of the indi-
viduals affected by it. Every work of art owes its beauty and
significance to the artist’s perception and successful com-

SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT

563

political achievement. The great universe itself, diey asscrteil,
is a political community ruled by natural law. Significant,
surely, is the parallel between the political decline of Greece
and the transformation of this Greek science into an unreal-
istic metaphysics. It is because Parmenides suspected, and
Plato saw, the failure of Greek government that diese men
looked beyond an empirical science descriptive of actually to
a transcendent science descriptive of a Being which “fe” yet
does not exist. Because they wimessed political they

renounced that faith in actual justice which had inspired the
earlier scientists. They could not or would not see that the
cause of Greek distress was the smallness of their sovereign
city-states, and the confined and obstructed justice which this
entailed. They could not agree, accordingly, that the doom of
their cities, admittedly inevitable, was alM just. And with tiuB
failure of moral reali^ went a failure of cognifive or sdeo-
rific realism, a hardening of empirical inquiry into an ntpres-
sive but sterile metaphy^cs.

The parallel is seldom quite so clear in later timwi, chiefly
because the intellectual habits of the Greeks (Or shouy we
say their vocabulary?) were retained by peoples pf^ltxsdl^
undeveloped. We should see that Greek morality, as thk
appeared in their political institutions, was as astonishii^fy'
beyond that of other peoples as was their science. Yet there is
observable a loose but discernible connection between the
feudal and ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Middle Ages and the
medieval predilecdon for Neoplatonic and Aristotelian hier-
archies of forms. Again apparent and striking, however, is the
historical connection in the modem period between the devel-
opments of empirical science and democratic govenunenn Oar
purpose here is not to review this historical paraHel, hot to
diagnose and understand it as it works today.

Modern democracy differs from Greek democracy in liat
it places the individual above the law as the maker of law,
whereas liberty meant to the Greeks a ctanmon and equdi srf>-

SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT

565

We have seen how the past confusion of logic with empirical
hypothesis has limited and confined science. So long as
geometry was conceived to be “pure mathematics,” i.e. a study
resting on absolute and self-evident axioms, its postulates were
incumbent upon the scientist, and hypotfiesis had to r emain
within its framework. No hypothesis might be advanced, none
was conceivable, which violated those principles. When scien-
tists broke through this confinement by their acceptance of
non-Euclidean geometries, they demonstrated that geometry is
not pure but applied mathematics, le. empirical hypothesis; and
this ended at least the old confurion of the logical or theoretical
form of geometry with the descriptive material so informed.
“Pure mathematics” we now see to be a synonym for “logic^”
a study of symbolic systems viewed in their formal clarity and
in abstraction from any consideration of these systems in their
descriptive use. To distinguish in a scientific theory the logical
or formal element from the descriptive, empirical, or material
element is to liberate hypothesis; because one and the same
logic can now be compoimded with an indefinite numbtf of
descriptive elements, to produce a variety of self-consistent
descriptive theories. These theories are thmi alternative hypoth-
eses, susceptible to confirmation or disproof in the %ht of
observable fact.

The confusion of logic with descriptive theory limits hy-
pothesis to an “orthodox” field of speculation; but what are the
positive effects of this confinement, and what suggests or
motivates the confusion? Generally, it is just the result of intel-
lectual inertia, and has no positive motive. It is difScnlt, even or
especially for the scientist, to change those broadest descriptive
principles which have directed all past analysis. To change
these requires him to create new intellectual habits. Yet, be-
cause science is finally motivated by love of truth, it is chiefly
scientists who have escaped from dogma and initiated new
ways of thought. It is usually others than scientists who have
sought to confine empirical hypotheris and intellectnal progress

SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT

567

There the confusion of logic with descriptive hypothesis is
seen to involve the neglect of some body of particular fact, in
the interests of some favored body of fact. In practical matters,
judgment is seldom so easy; but the dogmatist usually betrays
his prejudice by admitting that his dogma involves injustice to
some individuds, and arguing that this is excused by some
larger good consequent upon it. But justice, which is philo-
sophical truth, forbids such casuistry. It requires the iitll
acknowledgment of every individual claim, not imly of
or of most. It requires acknowledgment of individuak past and
gone, of individuals now living, of individuals yet to be. The
principle acknowledges no limitation of time and space. The
only limit is the actual one, our relative ignorance of individual
being. But this confession of ignorance excuses no dismissal of
known fact. Moral responsibility is absolute and uncoinprcHai^
ing.

To defeat dogma and enthrone justice, modem sodety
created the democratic constitution. As the intention and effect
of logic is to secure living contact between hypothesis and
particular occurrence, so the intention and effect of this con-
stimtion is to secure the living repercussion upon government
and legislation of the individuals governed. To understand its
efficacy, compare the democratic constitution with nondemo-
cratic constitutions. Every people has its political constitution,
written or unwritten, because “constitution” means the haffit-
ual procedure dete rmining the appointment of govOTiment, the
sources and limits of legislation, etc. The constitution of a non-
democratic society is quite simply one which intnets the
responsibilities and powers of government to some group fewer
in number than the whole people. It is perhaps irrdevant to
justice whether this group rules wisely or foolishly, beiev-
olently or malevolently, in order to presave hereditary
privilege or in order to inaugurate utopia. Such govemnient is
unjust, however “good” or “bad” it be, because it violates tiie
first requirement of justice, which is ttot every human beti^

SaENCE AND GOVERNMENT

5^9

would injure or destroy it. Our first objective in govemmeat
should be minimum govenunent, leaving a mayinniTn sphere to
freedom, persuasion, and education. However, there can be set
no formal limits to government. The intention of the constitu-
tion should be to secure to every individual his participation in
government and his voice in legislation. The conditions secur-
ing this franchise will vary with social progress. What provides
these conditions belongs in the constitution; what does not has
no place in the constitution. Constitutional law is not in its
formal prescription eternal law. What is eternal in it is its
purpose, which is to secure the conditions of self-government.
If it should be found, for example, that an extreme maldistribu-
tion of wealth defeats the intention of the constitution, then
the legal correctives of that evil should appear as constitutional
amendments. It is not debatable, however, that government
should be limited in its every dealing by “due process of law,"
because whatever violates that edict is done arbitrarily and
illegally. Just government is necessarily constimtional govern-
ment, or government by law; for there exists no device other
than legislation which allows a plurality of individuals to estab-
lish and enforce a cooperative decision. It follows, finally, that
the final arbitrament must be that of the court of law, be-
cause it is there, and only there, that the law of the land, includ-
ing its constitutional law, is called into effective operation. The
division of government into three branches is not a device to
limit government by reciprocal checlcs and controls; it b the
necessary mechanism by which a people makes, implements,
and applies its law.

Democratic government is today the chief means by which
the individual exercises his moral responsibility. TTus regtonti-
bility is not limited by national boundaries, it is to and for all
men everywhere. It is evident that our political acts ^ect the
lives of individuals in other nations. In a democratic world,
national polities would be jurisdictional districts a^ not
sovereign states. There is truly no soverogn state, there is truly

SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT

57t

movement which in Britain and America proceeded to poKtical
revolution, it may be argued, had its wide origins in the popular
spread of the Franciscan brotherhood in the thirteenth century.
However this may be, there is no question of the fact that the
establishment of democratic liberty by means of a written con-
stitution preceded by more than a century the complete en-
franchisement of science. This latter has occurred only in oar
own time. It is only today, in virtue of the clear and explide
distinction between formal logic and descriptive science, that
empirical hypothesis is finally freed from the last dogmatic
shackles which confined it.

Now that science is finally freed from the sheath of dt^gma
which had protected its immaturity, science may properly be
the support of intelligent practice. Its first assignment is to
illuminate our understanding of the relation of constituticmal
to other law. If we lose faith in the democratic constitution, it
will be because this constitution seems to require “interpreta-
tion” dictated by what is vaguely referred to as “different
social philosophies.” This is the vocabulary of intellectual and
political skepticism; and there is no question that a succession
of court majorities widely diverging in “social philosophy” and
in their consequent legal decisions will weaken faith in demo-
cratic justice. Yet what is the alternative? So long as our own
G)nstitution is fixed, must it not by some expedient be made to
fit the facts, i.e. conform to social actualities? Of course it must.
Not to conform would be finally to become discredited as an
agency of justice, and to be thrown off. Yet how can it be
t^own off? A people ruled by law must abide by law. It must
somewhere, either in a Supreme Court or in some lower court,
accept the jurisdiction of law. To throw off the Constitution
would be to live by no constitution, and no longer live by law;
and this means, whatever one pleases to call it, a person^ <fic-
tatorship by some permanent or transimt group usurping
justice.

Our error has been to think of the Constitution as fixed, and

SaENCE AND GOVERNMENT

S73

confined within that one form or logic. It is free to cast new
forms, even new logical forms. Let us establish this last free-
dom!

We said that geomeoy had disclosed itself to be empirical
hypothesis, whereas arithmetic had disclosed itself to be a
purely logical system or notation. This statement was rou^y
correct, but not the whole truth. The several geometries
in certain only of their generative postulates, other postulates
remaining formally identical in all. These identical postulates,
disclosed by formal analysis, comprise the “logic” of such
geometry as we now have. This does not mean, however, that
there is no other logic or notation useful in the description of
physical nature. As a matter of fact, ph)rsical science makes
very great use of norigeometrical logic, for example in quantum
mechanics; and the next rather terrf)dng re^onsibility of the
physical scientist, to which Einstein and others already devote
themselves, is the creation of a single notational system or
“logic” which will replace these two notations now in use.

Similarly we should not suppose that arithmetic or number-
theory, whatever its “purely logical” status, defines forever the
largest outline of numerical form. Mathematicians such as those
who develop the theory of groups already explore beyond
these confines. There was a time when mathematical lo^c, or
arithmetic, forbade the notion of fractions not to be ^resed
as a ratio of two integers, forbade the notion of nothing, for-
bade the notion of negative quantities, and forbade many an-
other notion now familiar to the mathematical student. Arith-
metical progress has been a continuous re-creation of notational
logic — ^the only sort of logic we know.

So it is with the democratic constitution. The modem ftffm
is not that of the Greeks. The Constitution of the United States
is not the original Constitution, which has been subjected
to amendments each of which modifies the mcanmg of ^ the
Constitution as a whole. What we need accordingly k a
political science which will do for constitutional law what the

IV THE FUTURE

29 THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE

philosophical truth is its enfranchisement of science*
through the complete liberation of empirical hypothesis. Even
the astounding scientific achievement of the last half century
proceeded under a rationalistic handicap. This was the assump-
tion that science is a superstructure built upon a fixed founda-
tion of obligatory principles, or committed to a single definable
“method.” Many books are published professing to present
scientific method; but examination reve^ these to be only a
confused conglomerate of logical formulas and current hy-
potheses, cemented by vague discussions of probability, induc-
tion, and verification. In truth, the only concHton impend upon
scientific speculation is conformity to the two criteria of
knowledge, logic and fact. Sufficient understanding of fonml
logic may allow the scientist to estimate within his special
field the powers and limitations of current scientific langnage,
a perception which might enable him to ^tend the scoj^ of
his hypothesis; but the scientist is seldom hindered by any inca-
pacity of logical power. The physical scientist obttins in his
mathematical training a competence in logic surpassing that of
any save the most expert logicians; and every ^ appropriaaon
of scientific theory involves large understanding of Ic^cal

577

the future of scienc:k

ceptions blind us to individual quality, and thereby destroy
society.

What is the truth in this assertion? There is no truth in it.
We have seen that the primary principle of science is its em-
pirical regard for particular fact, and that this regard for par-
ticular fact activates a moral reverence for individual being.
If there is any way of thought which does not mechanke
thought and which properly esteems individual character, that
way of thought is thereby scientific.

Why therefore docs the lie flourish, whence derives its
plausibility? Its plausibility derives from a confusion of scien-
tific thought with scientific formulas. Scientific theories are
large and complex generalizations, defining certain widespread
characters of natural processes. Necessarily, general theory
abstracts in its statement from much particular difference. The
moralist, who is no scientist busy with the creation and applica-
tion of theoretical hypotheses, and whose knowledge of science
is culled from hearsay or textbooks, may suppose science to
present its theories as themselves a final description of namre;
and if he does so, he may well conclude that science abstracts
from particularity and individuality. If the moralist really were
the logician he sometimes pretends to be, he would know that
no general theory pretends to describe anything. The theory is
just a symbolic notation. Scientific description is the use of this
notation in the description of particular situations; and this
necessarily involves the greatest deference to particular or indi-
vidual character of which the human intellect at any time is
capable.

Science in its applications, as in its creation of knowledge, is
intrinsically and immaculately moral — ^it is nothing else than
the moral regard for individual being. Every sort of statement
classifies individual things under general terras indicating com-
mon properties; but it is only science which subjects general
statement to particular verification and which expertly adapts
it to the individual case. This is the very definition of science.

TOE future of SCJENCR 581

in their praiseworthy ciFort to emulate the theoretical achieve-
ment of physical science, have retained some of the conceptual
and mental habits of physical science. As the scientific study
of human behavior perfects its theory, it will necessarily rid
itself of concepts and habits ill-adapted to its specific material,
which is living, intelligent, and individuated human beings.
There, too, it will be seen that action directed by scientific
knowledge is of necessity moral action, in this case controlled
by respea for human character; and it will become a truism
that an industry which injures or deceives human beings de-
stroys the capital on which it lives.

However, this mature and developed sociology does not yet
erdst. What shall we do, in the meantime, to prevent the
blind application of the physical and biological sciences to
problems requiring a science of man which we do not yet
possess? It is this unintelligent application of science, and this
lack of social science, which support and even in some degree
justify the attack upon science as a mechanistic and mateii^-
tic faith destroying the human spirit. Turn from science to
art or to religion, say these critics of science — ^there alone you
will find a sort of knowledge which does justice to what is
specific and individual in man.

We must discern the clement of truth in this critidsm. It
lies in its recognition of the specificity of nature. Knowledge
of physical, vegetable, and animal process does not comprise
a knowledge of what is specifically human. The difference be-
tween man and other beings is more important, scientifically
and morally, than his likeness to other things. We still suffer
even in contemporary science from that seventeenth-century
rationalism which identified reason with a single theory of
reality, the error which empirical science in all of its develop-
ment has steadily invalidated. It is that very rationalism which
is mechanistic and materialistic. There is, says the rationalist,
really but one universal Being, possessed everywhere of the
character defined by self-evident principles of reason; and in-

XHE FUTURE OF SCIENCE

583

specific differences which distingubh things, plants, animals,
and men? Would not psychological theory and biological
theory be special variations of that most abstract theory?
Science would still be plural; psychophysics and biophysics
would not be descriptive of geologic and astronomic fact.

We may accredit to Samuel Alexander, Lloyd Morgan, and
other “eincrgcTiiLsts” the discernment of this ineradicable
pluralism of science. Theoretical analysis, say these men, has
definite limits. The reduction of organic process to physico-
chemical process (Le. the description of living behavior in
physicochemical terms) docs not affect the reality of those
specifically organic characters which distinguish organic from
inorganic matter; and similarly the reduction of psychological
fact to biological fact docs not erase the qualities distinguishing
man from other animals. There is still required a plurality of
distinct theories describing respectively physical, organic, and
human structures.

This is true; and so far as it goes we applaud the emergentist
for his insight; but if wc stop with emergentism, we discredit
science more profoundly, and undermine scientific faith more
effectively, than docs any anti-intellectual critique of science.
The emergentist still identifies science with its general theories,
he is still a rationalist in his conception of truth. For he goes
on to say that science and the human intellect are eternally
limited to this analysis of fact into incommensurable sorts of
fact, respectively physical, biological, and psychological or
sociological. In virtue of our physical, biological, and psycho-
logical theories we are enabled to discern in natural process
some three variant structures, and so reach causal explanations
of fact; but just for that reason, according to the emergentist,
we must refrain from all effort to explain causally the relation
of these differently structured processes, or their generation
one from another. We may not seek to explain fully how
metabolism transmits inorganic matter into vegetable and ani-
mal flesh, nor how inorganic matter generated a living world.

the future ok science

The edmple truth is, we know, that the scientist must postu-
late the presence of causal connection before he theorizes about
it. The emergentist would require the scientist to have his
theory perfected, even before he starts to construct theory or
to entertain empirical hypothesis. The emergentist forbids all
original speculation, all new hypothesis. This would fixate cur-
rent theory, much as Greek mctaph5rsics made dogma of
Greek science. But, to repeat, the source of his error is the fal-
lacious notion of general or universal causation, exerted by
general or universal Being. It is true that a primary postulate
of science has been the universality of causal connection; but
this postulate refers to particular causation, not to general or
universal causation, of which science knows and will know
nothing. The causal postulate is already affirmed in the truth
which generates science, and which asserts that real being is
individual being. “Real,” by definition, means causally effec-
tive. The rationalistic error, we conclude, is to see in the ob-
served similarity of particular causal processes a condition of
the existence of such causal process. In truth, the similarity
of causal processes is only the condition of our knowledge of
specific causal process. We know that events are caused,
whether or not we can describe their causes. We may not define
nature in terms of the limitations of human knowledge.

But what is the correction of the cmergentist’s error? Its full
correction is philosophical truth, postulating the universality
or ubiquity of necessary particular causation. Without this
postulate all scientific inquiry stops, and scientific knowledge
evaporates into mere verbiage. But its more pointed correction
is a perception of the implications of this truth for current and
future science. Science must and does postulate the complete
and intelligible determinateness of the process of evolution;
and as a matter of fact it already inquires, not without success,
into the causal processes transmuting inorganic into organic
matter. There is no reason why the evolutionary process should
be cut for purposes of theoretical analysis at just two or three

30

THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY

T

XN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS PHItOSOPHY HAS BEEN

presented as a study politically motivated, inquiring
into the implications of natural knowledge for the opposed
postulates of necessity and freedom. The postulate of natural
necessity has been shown to support the doctrine of absolutistic
govermnent, and democratic self-government has been shown
to require the postulate of natural freedom. Long controversy
between rationalistic philosophers affirming necessity and em-
pirical philosophers affirming freedom is closed by the victory
of empirical pliilosophy, achieved in our own century.

But now that the long controversy is over and the victory
of liberal theory assured, it is necessary to turn back to do
fuller justice to the rationalistic philosophers who defended
the idea of natural necessity. What was the intention of these
thinkers who so long and so fervently maintained their ration-
alistic dogma? They were motivated by fear of social chaos,
and by their desire for some absolute foundation for social in-
stitutions. The authority of church or state, they felt, must be
absolute. Sovereignty must be one and indivisible. Otherwise,
they thought, there can be no authority, no sovereignty, no
assurance of law and order. To this practical consideration was
added the desire for some absolute foundation supporting

587

the future of philosophy ^89

postulate of theoretical science. But science, we have seen,
postulates also the particularity or difference of things, under-
lying or accouipan)'ing their similarity. This is the meaning of
die scientific emphasis upon particular fact as the criterion of
general theory. Why, if things are radically different, should
it be assumed that they will always present similarities? Why,
if things arc free and not necessitated, should they necessarily
present any universal structure? Why should the physied
structure inferred from yesterday’s facts hold of tomorrow’s
facts? Why should things conform at all? Why should nature
not be chaos, devoid of large and lasting order?

A possible reply to this question would be to say that nature
may indeed be chaotic, and the apparent order of nature only
a mental framework which we project into nature. This Kanr
dan reply we cannot accept, because it destroys all scientific
and moral faith. Another possible reply would be to say that
sirce science docs exist, and supports itself upon the postulate
of natural conformity, the existence of science establishes the
fact that nature is uniform and must be uniform. This is to
claim too much. Science discovers much uniformity in nature,
it is true; but it discovers no reason why there must be uni-
formity. In its acknowledgment of particular character as most
real and ultimate, science implies that the order of nature rides
upon a deeper disorder or chaos; and the physical scientist, in
his recent researches, has demonstrated that this chaos or in-
determinacy exists, and that it sets limits to scientific descrip-
tion, Why should chaos not increase, and devour whatever of
order there is? Human society occasionally falls prey to chaos.
Why should nature at large not do so? "What keeps things
similar, what makes them more similar than they were, or
similar in new ways?

The philosophy of the future will make its first principle the
radical individuality of things; but it must also do justice to
the uniformity of things which makes theoretical science pos-
sible, and to the community of persons which makes govern-

the FtmnuE of philosophy

591

consequence of this error was a failure to appreciate the effec-
tive reality of individual character. The notion of fixed species,
for example, requires the notion of a superindividual force
'W’orking in or upon individuals, and confining their activities
within specific limits. In fact, however, the species ejffects
nothing — all that happens in this world is the result of indi-
vidual interactions. Why a species or type persists is something
that calls for explanation. It is not explained by the existence
of the species. It is known that the continued existence of a
species means that the species is adapted to its environment.
What do we mean by “adaptation”? To say that a species is
adapted means that the individuals comprising the species are
adapted to one another and to the other things affecting them.
Each individual thing exists in interaction with other inividual
things. Each individual is dynamically dependent upon the
other individuals to which it reacts. It is evident that the reac-
tions of a thing may be destructive or preservative of the things
which stimulate its reactions. If its reactions are predominantly
destructive of these stimuli, the thing will no longer be stimu-
lated, it will no longer react, it will cease to exist.

In this way, we arc led back to the true insight which under-
lay the Greek error. The Greeks saw that nature comprises an
economy, composed of things so adapted to one another that
their reactions to one another preserve them all. There is an
economy of nature, even as ilcere is an economy of man. The
Greek error was to suppose that this economic pattern is fixed,
and that it preserves itself. In truth, the economic order is not
fixed, it continually evolves; and it does not preserve itself, but
it has been created, perpetuated, modified, and enlarged by the
individuals dependent upon it for their existence. This is the
true moral law of nature, embedded in the very conditions of
individual existence; and out of this basic and original moral
fact have proceeded, “in the order of time” as Anaximander
said, all the orders and uniformities of the world. The individual
entities composing nature are by definition different, and they

the future of Pini-OSOPHY

593

exterminatory war. The same causes produce the same effects
today. Out of this chaos of human violence, we must believe,
arose the first political institution, possibly the clan system.
The large and congested population was organized into a num-
ber of clans. The individual identified himself only with his
clan, which protected him from the mass-excitement and
violence generated by the larger population. The individual
could know his .small clan, and he could accept its rather rigid
regulation of his behavior as a condition of peace. Among the
clans was preserved a minimum of necessary intercourse, care-
fully controlled. By the clan system an amorphous and
delinquesccnt population was crystallized into a viable pat-
tern.

That political institutions originated somewhat in this way
is suggested by the ritual and symbolism of the clans. Each
clan identified itself with some plant or animal species; and the
first “gods” appeared in mythical Wolves, Bulls, Oaks, and
Fishes whose “life” was the enduring life of the clan. The
clansmen were “children of the Bull”; and for them beef was
tabu except when eaten ritually, with awe and trembling. What
was the spell of these symbolisms, which have persisted through
all the centuries of civilization down to today? Did the con-
gested war-diseased population look back with nostalgia to the
“state of nature,” which disappeared with the domestication of
plant and animal food? Did men long to be again just an animal
species sharing the natural economy of the wilderness? And
did the clan system profess to be a return to that state of
nature, in its solemn pretence that humans are “really” wolves,
catde, sheep, and fish? Again and again, in later history, we see
populations which have outgrown their political economic in-
stitutions rise in social convulsion, and attempt a “return to
nature.” How can man return to nature, what does the nos-
talgia for nature mean? Man returns to nature only by his
creation of political-economic institutions which remove con-
gestion, and allow populations larger than have existed before

THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY

595

physicochemical environment, this advance being usually
spoken of as “the scientific and industrial revolution.” For a
century, there has been enormous human increase, leading to
social congestion, mass-excitement, and exterminatory wars.
Once again wc seek new political institutions, partitioning hu-
manity into viable groups and regulating the intercourse of
these groups. And once again men turn, in their search for a
symbolism .supporting this new order, to a myth suggested by
those interests which led to the congestion from which they
must be saved. It was scientific interest in physicochemical
nature which initiated the industrial revolution, with all of its
social consequences. So there appears today the symbolism of
materialistic philosophy, assuring us that if we will only believe
that men are (not wolves or sheep or fish but) physicochemical
mechanisms, the social future will be secure. This materialisdc
philosophy is usually presented as nothing but science itself;
but materialism is metaphysical myth, and not science. The
physicochemical processes constituting the human being are
to be understood more by way of their difference from other
physicochemical processes than by their likeness to these. What-
ever overlooks or denies specific or individual difference is a
myth. Science is just the consistent refusal to neglect specific
and individual differences. From science we deduce, in place
of myth, the truth that respect for individual being is the
foundation of all human and natural economy.

When we survey the large course of evolution, we see that
it has proceeded by great leaps or abrupt departures from type.
This is what allows us to classify things into species, genera,
orders, etc. Consider, for example, the chemical elements, each
type of atom clearly demarcated from its ninety-odd fellows.
Why is nature not qualitatively continuous, in such a way that
between any two known types there will be found a third?
Why is nature specific? The answer of science is that nontypi-
cal individuals have existed, but have failed to survive and re-
produce themselves. This still does not explain why ijew and

597

ihe future of philosophy

congestion, in which things otherwise well adapted are over-
somulatcd by things of their own kind. The individual is no
longer adapted to members of its own species. There occurs in
all of nature the violence and destruction which in human so-
ciety is war or massacre; but there also may occur those crea-
tive responses which initiate new sorts of adaptation supporting
an increase of being. These creative responses are the reactions
which have established new types and species, and advanced
the progress of cosmic evolution. The whole course of evolu-
tion may be understood as a creation of material nature, with
continuous increase in the number or quantity of existent
things, this increase requiring the continuous readaptation of
things primarily to things of their ovra kind. Evolutionary
progress is a qualitative progress, advanced by the rise of new
and more deeply adapted types of being; but the qualitative
progress is also a quantitative progress, the new type being
“higher” just insofar as its reactions tolerate and support an
increase of being. Thus the progress of human character is to
be measured by the increase in human life which it makes
possible; and human progress is accordingly most easily ap-
preciated in terms of the development of the political economy,
by means of which man has supported in health and secTOty
a steadily increasing population. Materialism was right in its
quantitative cuqihasls; but it overlooked the fact that the size
and security of a population is! dependent upon the character
of the individuals composing it. Idealism was right in its ein-
phasis upon quality; but in rejecting quantitative naeasure, it
deprived itself of all objective moral criteria, and inevitably
became arbitrary and prejudiced. Use the quantative measure;
but discover the quality which conditions the quantity of life
or other existence!

There is every reason to believe that human progress illus-
trates the principle which has determined the evolution of
nature at large. Human progress is conditioned by the ap-
pearance and spread of new qualitative character , which sooner

THE yUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY

599

of violent disturbance need not of itself effect the moderation
of violence, by means of an advance to some new form of
organization. This transcendence of old forms by new forms is
unpredictable and mechanically inexplicable. How can it be .
eixplained, if nor nicclianically?

Mechanical explanation means the exhaustive analysis of any
particular occurrence in tenns of unifonnities or similarities
already known to invest entities of the sorts involved in the
occurrence. But the appearance of a new type or species, estab-
lishing a new pattern of interaction among things, by defini-
tion escapes reduction to earlier uniformities. The new type is
“emergent.” Darwin rightly attributed to chance the individual
variations which he saw to be the condition of specific change.
He did not mean, he said, that these variations are uncaused,
but only that their causes escape detection.- Biological science
through its genetic studies has advanced far beyond Darwin
in its knowledge of the mechanisms of heredity; but it must
still statistically attribute to “chance” the origin of what genetic
combinations shall occur, to deteimine the character of a
living population. Recourse to statistical methods involves a
renunciation of strictly mechanical explanation. The latttar
seeks to determine causal relations among individual entities,
whereas statistical analysis seeks only to determine approximate
uniformities of group behavior.

It should not be supposed that the use of statistical methods
prejudices the scientific conviction that everything happens by
due cause. On the contrary, statistical science establishes this
causal postulate more firmly. When the empirical philosopher
challenges the postulate of universal necessity, he means to
deny that particular events must necessarily conform to some
universal design. He does not deny, rather he most emphati-
cally insists, that particular events are causally necessitated by
other particular events. His intention is to affirm particular
causation, and to say that all effective causation is the work of
individual entities interacting upon one another. This means.

the future of philosophy

6oi

ways. The conformity of things, evolutionary science informs
us, is more than bare uniformity. The conformities or uni-
formities preserved by nature are ways of reciprocal adapta-
tion among things, these reciprocities constituting a natural
economy. The specific types of nature are due to the multipli-
cation, spread, and persistence of certain individual characters
which proved to be preeminently adapted. The classification
of natural species points to a natural history, which, if we could
know it, would inform us of the individual entities in which
these species originatcil. There has been an historical succession
of individual characters establishing new and better adapted
types. These individuals have advanced natural evolution from
its physical and chemical beginnings, through its mineral, or-
ganic, and social stages, to what is supremely human in man
today. These potent individuals are the true creators of the
world.

It is for the philosophy and science of the future to elaborate
and propagate this truth. Only individuals are causally effective;
and the total achievement of effective individuals is nothing
less than the creation of the cosmos. It may some day be
scientifically demonstrated that henceforth the hub of cosmic
CTeation lies in the human life on this planet, in that the activi-
ties of human life proceeding on earth exert just that small but
decisive influence which makes the difference between cosmic
health and cosmic decay. In this case, man would literally be-
come the creator and providence of the world. However this
may be, fact and logic compel the conclusion that nature is
and always has been the creation of its individual constituents.

It is a democratic world that we inhabit, the divine govern-
ment of nature being wholly that of the things in it.

This insight into the individual origins of natural uniformi-
ties revolutionizes man’s concept of nature. It provides full and
final release from the dogma of material necessity, and opens
our eyes to the creative power which always has invested and

the future of PUItOSOPHY (S03

Human memory, in historical science, brmgs some acknowl-
edgment to the seers, statesmen, scientists, and saints who by
word and deed have established new adaptations of the human
individual to his human and natural environment. Behind these
heroes are the anonymous and unsung individuals who inspired
them; and back of human history is the unrecorded past, hu-
man and subhuman, no less rich in individual achievement
which carried energy from its immaterial beginnings, through
its chemical, mineral, and organic stages, to man and his
civilization.

We cannot develop this theme here. To do so would be to
transform science into the religion it ought to be and some day
will be. For what we shall learn is this: Creative love alone has
from the beginning engineered this world; and if man abjures
this religious love, the very stones will cry aloud their adora-
tion, and take up the creative work which man lets fall. But
we shall not let it fall. There lies ahead of man a heaven that
shames all prophecy. That heaven, or annihilation, is his destiny.

Philosophy in this way finally returns to the deeper truth
of religion such as that of the New Testament, or of art when
it points to a mercy and love which is the deeper fount of all
justice. Political institutions, whatever their form, will not give
us security and peace if they are observed only in the letter,
and not in the kmdly spirit which created them and which they
were created to serve. No more than logic provides scientific
truth if it is not the instrument of willing attention to all par-
ticular fact, does a democratic constitution secure justice if
it is not used to implement a kindly and loving goodwill toward
all human individuals. Let democratic society lose itt loving-
kindness, let it confuse the machinery of democratic govern-
ment with the tricks of power-politics, and very quickly a
political majority will by harsh and autocratic action incite
some offended minority to justified rebellion. The democratic
constitution will secure justice if it makes effective in legisla-

INDEX

AB£IARD» l80

Absolute, the, 409, 451, 461, 478
absolute idealism, 417
Absolute Mind, 368, 417
absolutism, political, 5 If., 173 ff.,
197, 202 3ff., 208, 21 1, 214, 277,
Ch. X7, 382, 408, 461, 566
Academy of Plato, 81, 94, 100, 103
Tactivisme, 443, 503
adaptation, 489, 495, 591, 600
Addresses to the German Nation,
363

AESCHYLXJS, 27 74, 2l8ff.

aesthetic Knowledge, 89 ff., 288,
354, 402, 44X jff.
age of reason, 217, 225, 313
agnosticism, 409

ALBERT OF SAXONY, 225
ALBERTOS MAGNUS (of Cologne),
182

ALEXANDER, 449, 473, 583
Alexander of Macedon (the
Great), ii8, 127
Alfred, King of England, 142
American government, 3
American pragmatism, 490
American revolution, 5, 486

AMMONIUS SACCAS, I4I, l 6 l

anal5mc geometry, 245

analytic propositions, 337, 46S,
513* 549

ANAXAGORAS, 62 ff.

ANAXIMANDER, 29, 33 ff., 48, 5 1, 62,

74, 164, 591

ANAXUVIENES, 33, 36 ff., 48, 5I ff.
Angelic Doctor or Philosopher,

the (ST. THOMAS AQUINAS), 182
animal faith, 479
ANSELM OF CANTERBURY, 1 79

anthropomorphicism, 39 ff., 48, 52,
258, 404
Antichrist, 434

anti-intellectuaiism, 326, 438 ff.
antinomies of reason, 342
ANTISTHENES, 1 26
apathy, 128
Apology, 75

aposteriori knowledge, 336
apriori knowledge, 336
AQUINAS (ST. THOMAS), l8l ff., 476
Arabic learning, 176, 182, 188

ARISTARCHUS, 120, 221
ARISTIPPUS, 133

aristocracy, 117

ARISTOTLE, 6, II, 3I, 37, 96, 102 ff.,
123, 140, 164, 171, 177, 182 ff.,
188, 221, 231, 236, 242, 362,
412, 428, 476, 590

605

INDEX

Comrmmst Manifesto, 39*
“concrete logic,” 494, 551
“conaetc universal,” 370

CONDILLAC, 3*0

Confessions of Aug;ustine, 163, 167
Conscience (Kant), 349, 33*
Consolations of Boethius, 14*, 177
Constantine, the RiniH-ror, 175
Constitution, 371 fF.
constitutioraJ government, 20, 117,
329

constitutional land, 367 ff.
contingency of nature, 183, 250,
269, 299. 303 > J 33 f 4501 43 *>
475 .

continuity, 34, 203, 438
contract theory, 135, 137, 204,
207 ff., 3 II, 321 ff.

Le Contrat Social, 321
conventionalism, 32, 48, 67 S~, 78,
95, i2d, 137, 443.

COPERNICUS, Copemican revolu-
tion, 221, 242, 464
correspondence theory, 282 ff.,
488

Comic Evolution, 480
cosmology, 34, 37, 61
creation, creationism, 15, 89 it., 91,
163 ff., 248, 264, 601, 604
Creative Evoltuion, 441
criteria of truth, 191, 237, 282,
415, 482, 502, 509, 543, Ch. 27
critical philosophy, 13, 178, 277 ff-,
313, Ch, j8, 342, 396, 438 ff.,
491

critical realism, 281, 290
Critique of Judpnent, 334, 353
402 ff.

Critique of Practical Reason, 334,
348 ff., 357,400

Critique of Eure Reason, 334

35 i» 357 i 3 <Si
Crito, 76

CROCE, 444 ff .

607

Cynics, cynicism, iidff,

Cyrenaics, 133 ff.

Cyrus the Great, 22

DARWIN, 51, 105, 373, 382, 392,
410, 422, 428 ff„ 559, 599
d’autricourt, 223
Declaration of Independence, 5
Deism, 319 ff.
deity, 451

definition, 72, 112, 114, 279, 282,
46B

DE LA METTRXE, 3 20

demiurge, 91, 602
democracy, 4 ff,, 20, 6z, 75, 77, 82,
86, 117, 158, 174, 196, 207 ff.,
234, 318 ff., 324, 351, 397t
434i 535 Ch. 28, 603

DEMOCRITUS, 59 ff.

De Rerum Nature, 137
DESCARTES, 4, 12, I4, 2X6, 232,
243 ff., 255 ff., 258, 263, 268,
278, 283, 286, 304, 3X8, 331,
334, 346, 348, 374, 406, 4X4,

4*55 540* 547
descriptive knowledge, 282
determinism, 6x, 91, 165, 247, 260,
301 ff., 3355 3^5 S., 447 »
development, 105 ff.

DEWEY, 491, 493 ff- '
dialectic, 95, 150, 362 ff.
dialectical idciism, Ch. 19, 407,
409

dialectical materialism, 368, Ch. 20
Dialogues Concerning N atural
Religion, 308
DIDEROT, 320

DIOOENES, 127

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, 1 42,

178

discontinuity, 55, 263, 435* 43 ^
Discourse on Method, 244
Discourses (of Rousseau), 324
divine law, 53, 185
divine right, 205 ff., 279

INDEX

609

FRANCIS OF ASSISI, ST,, Franciscans,
186 ff., X93ff., 223, 288, 312,
418, 558
Franco, 203

freedom, 4, 7 ft, 125, 135, 163,
x 66 y 198 ft, 204, 207 ft, 209,
248, 252, 260, 265, 315, 324,
390, 410, 470, 473, 524 ft
Free Man^s Worship^ 158
Freemasonry, 45
FREGE, 467

friendship, 90, 117, 136
functional psychology, 488
functional realism, 479
Furies, the, 27, 52

GALILEO, 12, 188, 216, 223 ft, 242,
272

Genealogy of Morals^ 434
“general will,” 321ft, 388
Geneva, 327
Genghis Khan, 326
genus, genera, 105ft
geometry, 548
German scholarship, 486
Germany, 574 ff., 395. 437

GIBBON, 152
“golden mean,” ii 6
“Good, the,” 103
goodness, innate, 209

GORGXAS, 69

gravitation, 224, 243, 296, 386, 431,
540

Greek character, n, 20 ft, 143 ft,
160 ft, 525

Greek government, 20 ft
Greek patriotism, 24
Greek religion, 25 ft
GREEN, T, IL, 416 ft
GROSSETESTE, 188, I94, 2l6, 22 $

Ha 7 nlety 219, 356

HARRINGTON, 382

Harvard University, 478, 487
HARVEY, 242

heat, 35, 598

hedonism, 133 ft., 309» 4* *

HEGEL, 4, I4I, 329, 361, 363 ft.,
382, 387, 390, 403, 406 ft.,
412, 418, 437, 444, 449, 463,
477> 493 ft-» 570
Hellenic, Hellenistic, 124
HELMHOLZ, 548

H61oise, 1 81

HELVETIUS, 319, 396 ff.

Henry vii (Tudor), 173, 197, 219
Henry viii (Tudor), 198, 382

HESIOD, 32

HERACLITUS, 49 ft., 59, 67 ft., 93, 95,
370

hierarchy of forms, io6, 266
history, concept of, 4 ft, 15, 35,
151, 165, 219, 320, 373, 378 ft.,
384 ft., 407, 425 ft., 440, 444,
60 1

historicity of Jesus, 156
Hitler, 203

HOBBES, 6 ft,, 203 ft., 207, 214,
274 ft., 283, 287, 351, 406, 434

HOLBACH, 320

Holy Ghost, 162
Homer, 32
homo sapiens, 115
human economy, 592
humanism, 26, 89, 13 1, 157, Ch. 24
human law, 53, 185
HUME, 4, 8, 13, 64, 131, 241, 283,
292, 294®., 317, 321, 33^
333 337> 348, 3701 4i4>

416, 421, 427, 439, 448, 453,
462, 468, 490, 506 ft., 535, 538
HUSSERL, 476 ff.

HUTTON, 429

idea, 141

idealism, 257, 264, 285, 291, Qi. 19*
346, 365, 402, 416 ff., 420, 444,
4<53. 495» 597

Ideas of Reason, 339 ft., 346
ideas, simple and complex, 280

INDEX

6ll

290, 296, zgS, 509, 312, 317,
35 3 < 57 » 370 » 382, 485. 490
lodges, Pythagorean, 41
logic, 43, 44, 56, 74, uiff., 1 3 1,
179, 185, 235 fE., 242, 266 ff.,
344, 361, 367, 412, 465 ff., 471,
494, 512, 517, 543, Ch. 27, 573,

577

LogiCf of Hegel, 369
logical necessity, 268
logical positivism, 512 ff.
logical system, 512
Logosy 140, 161, 521, 527
LOTZE, 478
Love and Strife, 62
LucRETins, 137, 169, 177
Lyceum, 124
lyell, 429

MACH, 478, 508 ff., 514, 517
MACHIAVELLI, Il8, 169, 2Q3, 206

majority rule, 322, 329

MALEBRANCHE, 257

Manichaeism, 162
MARCUS AURELIUS, 12 J
MARX, 4, 329, 361, 363, 368, 376,
Ch. 20, 403
^‘masses, the,” 412
material cause, no
Materialism, 59 ff., 109, 227 ff.,
273 ff., 287, 320, 368, 376, 388,
404, 486, 595

mathematics, 40 ff., 55, 59, 72, 94,
97, 114, 126, 242, 244, 263,
282, 305, 336, 398, 465 ff., 512,

547 ^ ^ ^

matter, 91, 109 ff., 115, 246 ff., 205,
363, 409

Matter and Memory , 441
mechanistic science, 35 ff., 51, 59»
63, 165 ff., 247, 260, 320, 334,
348, 356, 440 ff., 447 ff., 598 ff.
medieval character, 172 ff., 217
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius^
127

MEINONG, 476

Mentalism, 268, 346
Messiah, 153

method, 44, 56 ff., 71 ff., 78, 94 ff.,
97, 244, 415, 494, 578
method of agreement, etc., 413
method of reflection, 472
Milesian philosophy, 30 ff., 45, 48,
51, 59, 61 ff., 74, 92, 103
MILL, JAMES, 410
MILL, JOHN STUART, 4Ioff., 588
mind, 288, 346, 368, 375, 376
minority rights, 323, 41 1
mixed state, n8
modem character, n, 526
modernism, 168, 176, 187, 1945.,
200, 221, 243

modern science, ii, 182, 191 ff.,
Ch. 12, 415
modes, 250

Mohammedan World, 176, 182
monad, monadism, 263 ff, 472 ff.
monar^y, monarchism, 117, 147,
202, 205 ff.

monastic government, 41
MONTAIGNE, 486
MOORE, G. £., 462
MORE, 382

MORGAN, LLOYD, 583

moral intuition (in Kant), 349
moral law, 350, 5565.
morphology of Aristotle, 114
MOSES, 139, 188
Moslem culture, 138, 182, 188
motion, 50, 54, x88, 221, 246, 263
music, 43, 354, 402
Mussolini, 203, 329, 446, 563
mutations, 108, 430, 436
mystery religious, 41, 153
mysticism, 138, 143, 187, 257, 262,
289,418,561

mythology, 32, 38, 404, 426, 593 ff.
myths of Plato, 91, 99

national church, 200
nationalism, 169, 177, 218, 311,
326

INDEX

physics of Aristode, 119
physis, 4*5
Pietism, 333

MATO, n, 45. 57. <53 ff-. 09 ft*. 75.
78, 80 102 ff., 108 If., 1 15 »•»

121 if., i29ff.,i38ir-, i55.ftS3.
188, 221, i27i ^3*1 ^33» ^3D»
242, 247, 256, 269, 304, 34<5,
362, 365, ^02, 425, 4^8, 437»
468, 547’ 55^» 5^3^

590, 602

PtoTiNUS, 14X ff.» 4^8, 442
pluralism of specific forms, 100
plurality of causes, 192
plurality of sciences, 237
POINCARE, 509 ff.
political epoch, 3
political pamphlets, 201
political science, modem, 204
Politics (of Aristode), iiyS,
political realism, 8i, 82, 202, 375
PORPHYRY, 141, 177. *79
positivism, 344. 4 °°. 404 . 459 ft*.

483,Ch.25.5>*ft*, „
postulates, philosophical, 8, 50, 02,

340

potentiality, 109
pragmatics, 520

pragmatism, 400, 403, 439* 459 »
483, 485 ff., Ch. 244 517 _

Preamble to the Declaration of
Independence^ 5
predestination, 265
preestablished harmony, 265 ff*
Presbyterians, 198 ff.
primary and secondary qualities,
281, 282 ff., 289
Prince, The, 203
Principia Mathematica, 460 it.,
471 ff., 512 ff., 549 , ,

Principles of Human Knowledge,

Principles of Psychology, 4^7
process, 49 ff.

“process of reality, 47^

progress, 3, 157, 217, 232, 389, 427,
49«5» 597 ^ .

progressive education, 327, 499
proletariat, 388

? rophecy, 28
fotagoras, 10, 68 ff., 133
Protestant ethics, 350
protocol sentences, 518
PROUDHON, 382
PROUST, 441

Prussia, 375 ^ ^

psychology of Plato, 84, 87

PTOLEMY, 120

“pure perception,” 441
puritans, puritanism, 42, 198 ff.,
208, 252 ff., 259* 485
purposiveness in nature, 350, 447
PYTHAGORAS, Pythagoreans, 40 ff.,

4^1 54i 59» 9^» *®3» I35»

221, 255, 33<^» ^ 7 ^^ 4 ^ 5 »

469, 590

Quakers, 333

qualitative criterion of value, 597
quantitative criterion of value, 597
quintessence, 1154 *^9

Rationalism, 44 » 55^*9 95
224, 269, 304, Ch. i 3 » ^h. 144
3i8,Ch, 18, Ch. 19
rational intuition, 367, 386
rational morality, 348
realism, 179 ff*4 4 ^ 3 * ^3

realistic logic, 517
“Real appears, the,’ 370
Realpolitik, 81, 82, 202
“reconstruction of knowledge,
338 ff., 398, 4 ^. 5 *® ^
reflection, method of, 3^4
Reformation, 149* i 7 ^i ’

regulative principles, 343

relativism, 5^4 ^ 7 >

relativity of form and matter, 120

p)EX

|#bstance, 31, 49 fF,, 64, 66, no,
r 281,300,339
iiiberman, 433 S*

S ireme Court, 571 ff,
ogism, xiz
nbolic systems, 267
npathy, 3x0
nposiWHy 402
ntax, 519

tithctic propositions, 469
Tracuse, 86

Sutological sentences, 512
technocracy, 408
|^olog7, 165, 356 ff., 447
A.LES, 2Z, 31, 33 ff., 48, J4<S
fcodicy, 130, 268
‘ eology, 308
Uorei^ 42

‘ bory, theoretical form, 45, 57,
72, 88, 97 ff., 384 ff., 484
ficory of ideas,” 8
eory of the state, 213, 328,
, 375

liomism, 182 ff.
aoRBAU, 126 , 486
ree potencies of man, 1x5
ree stages of history, 388, 404,
407

ree states of being, 42, 53, 82
feucYDiDES, 426
film Spoke ZaratbustrUy 434
\imaeuSy 91, 177, 602
" ne, 51, 2(57, 338i 399. 439. 445 ff-.

450. 480
(>i.sToi, 220

Xractatus Philosophicus, 517
mscendental dialectic, 361
iscendentalism, 44, 53, 55, 63,
Ij, 74. 77. 81, 91. 9 <S. “ 9 ff-. * 4 *.
437. 4<Si. 486

nscendental Ego, 363
tansmutation, 36
\'reati$e on Human Namrcy 295,
4x6

615

Trinity y 161, 180
truth, philosophical, 144, 404, 543,
Ch. 27, 562

Tudor dynasty, 173, 197 ff., 382
Two Sources of Religion and
Morality y 443
tyranny, 527, 568

uniformity of nature, iiff., 413,
588, 600

**unity of science,” 515
universals, universi being, 5,
. 178 ff., 1924 227, 433, 557
utilitarianism, 68, 3x0, 396, 410
utility, 310
Utopia, 82, 382

verification theory, 501
Vienna Circle, 517
Views on Representative Oovem--
menty 4x0

virtue, 72®., 128, 135, 155 ff., 357
vitalism, 121, 429
VOLTAIRE, 320, 329

Wars of the Roses, 173, 219
water, 33, 598

Way of Truthy Way of Opinion,
54

Whigs, 206 ff., 4x1

WHITEHEAD, 466 ff., 47I ff., 549
WHITZVCAN, 486
Will to Belkvey 4^2
Will to Powery 434
will to truth, 555

WITTGENSTEIN, 5x7
Wissenschaftslehrey 363
World as Will md as Idea, 399
world-soul, X42

XENOPHON, 71, 78

ZENO, 127